


Ganymedes

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume IV [1]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Historical RPF, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Historical References, M/M, Post-Canon, Romantic Poets - Freeform, Sturm & Drang, grossness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-12 00:32:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5647417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the carnage of the Dumasian finale, our heroes rise again.  Gods, demons, and poets are all caught up in the whirlwind of history, drama, and a love that will never die.  (Gross)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _First love returns, and friendship too is nigh_  
>  _Pain is renewed, and sorrow all the way._  
>  \- Faust, Johan Wolfgang van Goethe

**Locmaria, 1665 to Villers-Cotterêts, 1784**

Rocks fell. A lot of people died.

For a moment, I thought I had been quite dead myself. The rock lowered itself over me, obscuring the sky and Aramis’ stricken face. And then the earth beneath my feet sank, and a giant hand wrapped itself around my ankle.

Grand-Da had come for me.

Tartarus is vast and its pathways are manyfold. Apollo had told us there is a secret way in at almost every pagan temple. You just had to think about exactly where you wanted to go. Back in Greece, I did the ritual myself, not trusting Athos to think about where he wanted to go. There was no need for us both to fall head first into Aramis’ lap, was there? But there, in Locmaria, on Kalonese, the blood of the hunters was forfeit, and as the island sank, I sank with it.

The flittermouse would be all right, I figured. He always was.

The way out of Tartarus lay through Hades’ domain. I had built myself a raft from the bones of a leviathan I slayed to cross Phlegethon, which flowed out of Tartarus, brimmed with flames, and straight into the mouth of the Styx. I sailed past the stygian shores, thinking of Athos again and treading that very same path about fifteen years prior. A shiver ran through me and I stopped at the mouth of the Styx and Lethe. I would not drink - I needed to remember my way out. But a force, an energy, a sigh of something held me back, as if another had taken me by the hand. I looked around and found no one there. It must have been a shade, attracted to but unable to cling to my corporeal form.

I jumped into the Styx, knowing that a living creature was repugnant to her. That river would spit me out, back on Earth, back among the living.

But when I came up for air, my skin being warmed by the sun and cooled by the water around me, I found myself in an unknown realm. It was the realm of Mami Wata.

I thought she was possibly the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her ebony skin glowed in the sun and the serpent around her neck draped her like a slithering necklace, with the head resting on her heavy, naked bosom. Her nipples rose proudly, glistening with sweat and water. An African goddess washed ashore, just as I was.

“Whaaaaaaatttt are you caaallllled?” she spoke with the cadence of the serpent.

“I am Porthos,” I replied, knowing lying to a goddess of the waters to be useless. “Son of Helios.”

“You are soooooooo big,” she slithered into the water next to me and her fingers brushed across my arms. Her long hair dipped and dissolved into a black cape around her voluptuous body. “You will stay with Mami Wata. Yesssss?”

Like I said, one doesn’t say ‘No’ to a goddess. Especially not one as famous as Mami Wata for granting wealth and fortune in exchange for one tiny, measly thing: sexual fidelity. Oh, and secrecy. But this doesn’t count as me breaking that seal, because surely, none of you believe a word I’m saying!

I had spent about a hundred years in Mami Wata’s realm, on an island in the Caribbean called Haiti by the natives, frolicking with her ebony-skinned ondines, who had become sisters to me since they couldn’t be lovers. I belonged to the Mami, and every creature in her realm knew and respected it. But eventually, even a goddess moves on, and so, laden with gold and a new identity for a century of faithful services rendered, I made my way back to France.

It was clear that Ondinekind have always been good to me, but never more so than when I decided on a lark to return to my old estates in Normandy. Perhaps it had been Mami Wata, perhaps it was a certain instance of opposites attracting - water to fire - two elementals to each other. Whatever it was, I was grateful for it.

If I had not expected to inherit Pierrefonds back in the guise of my own grandson, I had expected to find Aramis there even less.

At first, I had not recognized him. He wore a large tricorn hat and the heavy overcoat of a military man. His hair had been tied into a long pony tail which trailed down his back in one wide curl. I recognized him by his hands, as they clenched behind his back around leather gloves which he chose to clutch rather than wear. They were still the same pale, elegant appendages that I had oft mocked for being better suited on a lady. He wore no more rings.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said, walking up to stand and tower over him. He looked up into my face and I noticed that he seemed more pale than when I last left him. His eyes appeared to have sunken into the orbs of his skull, but they still burned bright and fierce with intelligence.

He shut his eyes and opened them again, as if testing whether or not I had been a hallucination. I took off my own tricorn hat, hoping that the sight of my exposed head might jog his memory.

“You haven’t forgotten me, Aramis, have you?”

“ _Forget_?” his lips trembled and he took a step back. “Porthos, by God, is it really you?”

I opened my arms and he appeared to fall upon my body, weightless like a feather, and mute as the grave. “There now,” I said, embracing him tightly. “I see you haven’t forgotten me.”

“I saw you die,” he proclaimed in a hollow voice when I had deemed it fit to release him from my arms.

“Die? Ha ha!” He had always been rather amusing, my cousin’s demon lover. “Come now, Aramis. You did not think a rock could… what? Crush me? Ha ha!” My, but it was all rather amusing!

“A mountain…” he squeezed through his teeth, “A mountain collapsed on top of you…” His fingers clenched feverishly around those leather gloves. “The explosion… You said… You said… _Too heavy_.”

“And it was! By your baby Jesus’ bottom! Do you know how difficult it was to hold that thing up while you escaped?”

“I _mourned_ you!” he accused me, his voice almost the texture of the cry of a crow.

“Well, then rejoice at my resurrection, my friend,” I clapped him on the back and steered him towards the château. “Come, Monsieur, let us dine like in the good old days.” I could see his astonishment was not decreasing, even as his feet followed my lead towards my entryway. “Did you know the strangest thing, Aramis? A will had been found! Apparently, all my old domains are still in my possession. Well, technically, I am using a new, assumed name…”

“Where have you been?” the demon interrupted my tale of inheritance.

“Haiti,” I replied.

“ _Haiti_ ,” he repeated with a certain sense of disgust. These Eastern European demons, they really were rather snobbish.

“And where have _you_ been, my bloodthirsty comrade?” I redirected.

“Around,” he evaded. “Moscow. There was a plague… I had to leave.”

“No doubt,” I snickered and twirled my moustache. “Wine?”

“Please.”

He seemed… _off_. Like the kind of ‘off’ when he and Athos had been broken up, but more desiccated. I couldn’t quite place my finger on it.

“Where is Athos?” I finally asked, seeing no reason to beat about the bush.

A visible tremor ran through the revenant’s body and his hand flew up to clench at something hanging about his neck, an amulet of sorts, I presumed. His superstitions were always a bit beyond me, for I could never keep track of what exactly it was he truly believed in. Except Athos - he had unshakeable faith in his demigod.

“He’s gone,” Aramis replied and his chin trembled. He quickly brought the glass of wine to his lips and took a long gulp. “We… had to part ways.”

“Again? What is it with the two of you? You really seemed to have gotten it together last time!”

“I thought so too,” he responded quietly. His eyes were unfocused. He stood before me, but I was certain his mind was hundreds of leagues away.

I didn’t want to keep picking at the wound, but - Oh hell. “He left you?” I had to ask.

“Yes,” the revenant replied quickly and drained his glass, which I promptly refilled. “To a place where I could not follow him,” he added with a sense of pervasive tragedy the mystery of which I could not plunder and he would not divulge.

He made me uncomfortable. “Tartarus,” I said, snapping back to the present. He trembled again. “That’s where I descended to. Then from there, across the Underworld, into the Styx, and well… Haiti.” I smiled, remembering my divine lover and bringer of fortunes.

“When you were in the Underworld… Did you go to Elysium?” he asked, his voice wistful and thin.

“Don’t be foolish, Aramis. No one can just _go_ to the Elysian Fields and come back. Not even me! There is a natural order to the Underworld, and when you’re dead, well… then you’re dead.”

We spent a few days in each other’s company at Pierrefonds. I noted he had been particularly reticent, and had not floated a single scheme by me. I, in turn, had been feeling restless after my sojourn in the Caribbean. Sure, I had done a little pirating, here and there. Nothing to write home about, mind. But I wanted something else now, something more like what we used to have back in the seventeenth century.

“I have a hankering,” I told him, “to get commissioned in the Dragoons. Come with me, Aramis? It can be like it was before. Hell, we’ll even find Athos and drag him back here! One look at you, and he’ll be good as cooked.”

Aramis looked up at me and his face formed into a grotesque impression of a smile. It was distorted and did not sit right in his face. I almost crossed myself, for old time’s sakes.

“No,” he responded, in that same thin, quiet tone he had acquired. “No thank you, dear Porthos. I do not think the military career is for me just now.”

I smiled and wished him happy hunting. I knew, inevitably, our paths would cross again. Just as I figured next time I saw him, he and my cousin would be back together.

As for myself, it wasn’t difficult to convince humanity again that I had been a natural born son of a French nobleman on the isles. I had invented truly heart-rending stories of both my childhood and adolescence, for which I had been rewarded with love and a commission in the Queen’s Dragoons. The air, as Athos would have said, had been rife for war, and after a century under the Haitian sun, I had been ready to flex the muscles _above_ my belt again.

***

**Frankfurt, 1815**

Had I ever told Goethe how Athos had called me his Ganymede? I must have done, crouching in a smoky vault, haunted by a vinous demon, disjointed words spilling out of me in an intoxicated stream that the poet wrestled into shape and poured onto a piece of paper in an elegy of emotion. He was wild, young Johann Wolfgang, untamed and untameable, with his kindling eye and his poet’s mouth, blazing with genius fire of _Sturm und Drang_. His head was full of the knowledge of his time, just as it was full of the thirst for more. So much light; and always, always the deep desire to kindle more, to put the whole world ablaze with the twofold fire of his passion and his intellect.

He had summoned me and I had come. I granted him a look into the abyss of my dual soul, as our fates interwove at time’s thunderous loom. Had I been happy in those days? Perhaps. Yet I was the spirit that denied: I denied myself the right to happiness and life, for I had killed a God and I had been condemned to roam the Earth alone. Eternal and indestructible, I dwelled in the dank darkness of destruction and doom.

He had pulled me out of the grave in which I had entombed myself by my own volition. _Mehr Licht!_ old Johann Wolfgang had cried out on his deathbed. More light. Always more light. He had pulled me out of the darkness into which I had sunk and had kindled the glowing embers embedded deep within my soul. How many years had I roamed the wilderness before I had met him? A century of being nothing but an _upior_ , a scavenger that crept up cowardly in the night and fed on the weak and the frail when they slept.

I came back to Frankfurt to see my old friend Goethe in his new incarnation that the passage of time had bestowed on him: older, wiser, more learned. More human. He embodied the _genius_ of humanity like no other. The Roman _genius_ , the Hellenic _daimon_ : the divine nature that is present in every individual and that lights them from within.

I had found a paper among the few possessions that had survived my wilderness years. I must have told him about Athos calling me his Ganymede, and truly, he had been right to describe me as _part of that power which would the Evil ever do, and ever does the Good,_ for so much beauty had been born from the union between the light of human _genius_ and the dark of the upioric _daimon_.

 _How, in the morning brightness_  
_You all around shine at me_  
_Springtime, Beloved!_  
_With thousandfold love-bliss_  
_The holy feeling_  
_Of your eternal warmth_  
_Presses itself upon my heart_  
_Unending beauty_

 _Could I but embrace you_  
_In this arm!_

I bit my lips until they bled and stared at the piece of paper with burning eyes. Which of these were my words and which were his? How much had I told Goethe, and how much had he understood? I _must_ have told him about the moniker by which Athos called me in those first flushes of passion, before love had blossomed and then ripened into something even greater, something that transcended human experience. I must have told Goethe about the poems, too, with which my Achaean used to praise his little chyortik. For I found the ode, and I read it with a beating heart. I was over five hundred years old; a Ganymede no longer. A tidal wave of longing unmanned me and I sank down to my knees.

 _You cool the burning_  
_Thirst of my bosom,_  
_Lovely morning-wind!_  
_There calls the nightingale_  
_Lovingly for me from the misty vale._  
_I come, I come!_  
_Whither, ah whither?_

Oh, I knew whither. One path only was open to me, one path only would lead me to him: my God, my salvation. My penance. Across time and space, Athos was calling out to me, and I knew what I had to do: I would find him, and I would reunite us. Like I had done countless times, ever since we had first been torn apart on a winter night in Marienburg.

 _Up! Up it surges._  
_The clouds are leaning_  
_Downwards, the clouds_  
_Bow down to yearning love._  
_To me! To me!_  
_In your lap, clouds,_  
_Upwards!_  
_Embracing, embraced!_  
_Upwards to thy bosom,_  
_All-loving Father!_

“ _All-loving_ ”. I snorted with soundless laughter. Oh, he was not all-loving, the Father, and he certainly had no reason to love _me_ , the lover who had killed his son twice. The Son had no reason to love me, either; and he would not, for the waters of the Styx, the waters of Lethe, the gates of Elysium made him forget what had bound us together. But he would return to walk the Earth a god amidst mortals, and they would worship him as was his due. Would he appreciate that in one lucid moment, the Duke of Alameda had showed his dazzling teeth in Paris, and the promenade growing out of the Tuileries Garden, where the whores plied their venereal trade, acquired the name of Champs-Élysées?

Would he look at me with that mocking, heathen smile when he learned that I had the most beautiful avenue in the world named after the paradise that made him whole again? Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to see that face again – the beloved features, so noble, so beautiful, aglow with celestial light.

I left Frankfurt before first cock-crow. To France, to France! To Bragelonne. And then – up! Up! Upwards to thy bosom!

Springtime, Beloved!

***

**Eifel, der Deutsche Wald, 1815**

Last night I dreamt I went to Bragelonne again. I had not been back, not even in my dreams, since the day when I had climbed from the catafalque and reclaimed the lost part of me, the worst part of me, from the homunculus that crouched by my feet. I pressed my hand to my chest, and my palm tingled as the divine energy from the talisman seeped into my skin. The holy relic concealed there had tethered me to the world even during my darkest hours. I feared the bone alone would not be sufficient to bring him back. To complete the ritual, I needed the rest of his body. My heart shuddered in my breast with sudden panic, yet I persevered. The world needed him more than ever, the noblest, the most honourable of men: he was the only one to effect the impossible. He would restore the Bourbons like he had restored the Stuarts. One year ago, the crown had been returned to its rightful heir, Louis XVIII, _le Désiré_. Barely twelve months later, the news of Napoleon’s escape from Elba had reached me in Frankfurt, and I instantly knew that the rules of nature and the rules of gods had once again been violated. I heard nymphic cackling and giggling all the way from the Mediterranean Sea, as the daughters of the waves rejoiced in their covenant. The Bourbons had been forced into exile, and the Corsican upstart reached for the Imperial crown with grubby paws.

Memories of the Reign of Terror resurfaced in my mind. And in their wake, other memories trickled in, memories that I had deemed buried in the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul, under a layer of ice. At the mere thought of my lover, the ice thinned as its edges began to melt where they were wedged against my heart. My breast swelled with emotions that had slept the sleep of the dead for one hundred and forty years. It was a long way from the Grand Duchy of Frankfurt to the Loire Valley. As I traversed the states of the formerly proud Holy Roman Empire, I avoided highways and stuck to obscure side roads, just as I avoided sunlight and travelled shrouded in the twofold mantle of my cloak and night-time.

I stood by the brown-green wall of trees, and for a while, I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. The path wound away, twisting and turning between the trees. Novalis had believed the blue flower to sprout from the sacred soil between their roots. But it was not the communion of nature and spirit that awaited the traveller in the woods. It was the big bad wolf who stalked the wanderer in the shade, with piercing talons and slavering jaws, on silent cat-feet and the wings of death.

The veil of the goddess of Sais hung from the branches: she, the one who was all that is, what has been and what will be. No mortal had ever lifted her veil, but a mortal I was not. I gave my horse the spurs and its hooves sank into the muddy ground of the meandering trail. For me, the veil lifted, and I sank into her green embrace and into the churning sea of memories.

***

The depths of the forests were where the banished pagan gods skulked in the roots like toads, like newts, _wie die Molche durchs Gesträuche_ , long-legged like spiders, crawling on their bellies, scavenging the undergrowth, feeding on mulch and toadstools. Pagan gods or Christian demons – they were the same here, exiled from the community of humans forever. It was in quest of both that poets ventured into wilderness, and more than one surrendered his health and sanity on the altar of Enlightenment.

The forest encroached upon human souls and dwellings with tenacious fingers. Its tendrils coiled and slithered like serpents from the oaken heart of the woods, past fences and guard dogs, into the houses where humans lay in the embrace of Hypnos, while Thanatos, _Schlafes Bruder_ , straddled their chest and fed on their blood. The weak and the frail, the young and the old, the starving, the freezing, the sick – what little lifeforce they had left, it flowed into the mare that rode them at night, the _upior_ , the revenant from the East. Like his Teutonic brother, the _wiedergänger_ , the _nachzehrer_ , he skulked in the shadows and stole from the poor, from those who had nothing to give but the last drop in their veins and the last breath in their lungs.

He had come from France, lethargic and blind, tossed around by the winds like a dead leaf. He had slithered into a coffin on a battlefield in Flanders, because it had taken his fancy, crafted as it was in an artisan’s shop from pinewood, finished in dark rosewood stain and adorned with doves, stipple crosses, and a crucifix. He woke after a journey of hundreds of leagues. He slithered out again, for he did not wish to be buried, black soil in his mouth, black beetles crawling into his mouth, eating him from the inside. It was he who ate that night, feeding on the family who wept for a fallen brother and son, and Thanatos had a rich harvest. It was not the last battle, not the last son and brother who fell far away from his family, and not the last coffin. The tracks of coffins criss-crossed the lands, and Death travelled in them and crawled out again. The Pestsäule in Vienna bore witness to his journeys, as did the Mur de la Peste in Marseille.

But it was the woods, not the cities, that filled the hearts of humans with dread. It was the primal, untamed nature of the old gods whom they had banished and whose revenge they feared, even when they sat in their good, Christian homes that they had entrusted to the protection of the God of Israel.

He was a jealous god, a vengeful god, but his powers came from the desert. The green forests of the north were not his domain. Here, the Oak ruled supreme, the sacred tree of northern tribes. Under its branches and roots, in its heart of oak, the pagan gods lay in waiting. Hundreds and thousands of men and beasts had been burned in its praise, to propitiate the northern gods whose hearts were as hard and unrelenting as the timber of their trees. And when the God of Israel had crossed the waters and went on a rampage, followed by warriors who rallied under the banner of Christianity, the trunks and branches of the oaks that survived the massacre executed by God’s own missionaries were splattered with blood and brains of men who lay slain under the strokes of the sword. Under the blows of Boniface’s axe, Donar’s Oak, the Oak of the god Thor, fell with a mighty groan, and its desecrated wood was used to erect a Christian church. A crime such as this could not go unpunished: the murderer was slaughtered by heathens whom he had come to baptise, the blood-crime was avenged, the pagan gods rejoiced.

It was shadows of the old pagan oaks that grew and solidified and glided from beneath blood-soaked timber that itself grew from blood-soaked soil. There was such strength in those roots, such _power_. Even though the blood-sucking demon had not been born in these realms, it could thrive here. Not just pagan priests and Christian missionaries had rendered the lands fertile. The soldiers marauding through the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years’ War had made the soil fecund. It its depth, life flourished: dark life, half-life, the _demi-monde_ of creation dwelled there, gurgling and churning and boiling in a primordial soup, and sinning against the rules of man and nature in their refusal to die.

***

**The Underworld**

Lethe. The river of forgetfulness, they call it. If Styx is the boundary between the world of humanity and the Underworld, then Lethe is the channel leading towards Elysium. They say that all five rivers of the Underworld - Styx, Lethe, Acheron, Phlegethon, and Cocytus - converge at the center, and that dark marsh is also called the Styx. I have tasted those waters more than once. I have drunk from the Lethe as she took me through the gates of Elysium. I had forgotten.

“Athos, wake up.”

I opened my eyes and recognized the stygian shores immediately. A shadow moved above me, a foot prodded my body, rolling me towards a ferry that was docked by the shore in front of me. Charon, using his oar to anchor himself, was awaiting me. The last of the demigods.

“What are you doing? Get up.”

I recognized her voice. I scrambled back up onto all fours and my body heaved with nausea. A pair of black wings fluttered above my head and her hands held onto my armpits, pulling me onto my feet.

“Go on, then,” Eris said. “Go. Get into the ferry.”

My mind still reeled from my violent departure from the human realm. My soul, torn out of my body by the last breaking of the strings of my heart, appeared to have crash landed here and remained in some kind of a trance. Here - at the mouth of Styx and Lethe. Well on my way to Elysium again. How long had I lain here upon these shores?

“I don’t have coin for the ferryman,” I stuttered, my hands running up and down my body, discovering the bronze and leather of my old armor covering my manifested form.

“I’ll pay your wage,” my sister replied, forcing a golden coin into my palm and curling both our fingers over it.

“Why are you being so kind?” I asked, drawing away from her.

Her wings fluttered and one of them came up to shield her face, as if in a gesture of defense.

“Just get in the boat, Athos,” she spoke, her voice as soft and melodious as it was once upon a time, three thousand years ago in the days of Troy. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Oblivion? The end to all your suffering? To see Achilles and Odysseus again?”

“Why do you care? You’ve done nothing but hound me for centuries,” I spoke, my fist squeezing the coin into the palm of my hand.

“I loved you once,” she replied and her wings fluttered behind her once more, like leaves in the wind.

I turned towards Charon, who motioned me into the ferry. I took a step towards the river, but turned back to her once more.

“If I return to Elysium, I will forget him. Is that what you want?”

“He’s gone, Athos. Do yourself a favor and allow yourself to forget.” She had turned to walk away from the riverbed, her wings held aloft like two black sails. “I _did_ love you,” she said, with her back still turned to me.

 _I loved you too_ , I thought, but held my tongue as I got into the boat.

“I was certain you’d return,” the ferryman mumbled, motioning me towards a seat in the bark. “You know how it goes. We’ll be there in no time.” No time at all. Time stood still for the dead.

Ahead of us, in the fluvial distance, the gates of Elysium beckoned, vibrant and phosphorescent. I looked behind me to the shore and saw that Eris had gone. She had moved through my life like a shadow, and soon her memory too would be but a shadow. I closed my eyes and let my hand hang over the side of the boat, fingers trailing through the tepid waters of the Lethe. I would drink those waters soon, I wouldn't be allowed into Elysium otherwise.

Stygian blue they call it, the blackness that swallows up the world. There, where my fingers touched the water, I could have sworn someone else’s fingers touched back. My reflection melted and transformed. A face with beloved features, soon to be forgotten.

All of a sudden, a heart-rending cry tore through the darkness of the Underworld. My eyes flew open and I leapt up from my seat.

“What was that?” I asked Charon, who had also been visibly startled.

The ferryman’s brow furrowed and he pointed me towards the bench again.

“Pay it no heed. Sometimes, the souls I transport hear all kinds of things that aren’t really there. It’s a part of you that doesn’t want to let go of the life you left behind.”

“But you heard it too!” I accused and, just then, I heard it again. Only this time, the voice had called out my name.

_Athos! Athos! Why?!_

“Aramis!” I looked around but the shores of the Lethe were empty. “It’s his voice. I can hear him!”

“Sit down,” Charon growled. “We’re almost there.”

“He’s not here? Where is he?” I had the ferryman by his robe and shook him, almost making him drop his long oar.

The cry, something subhuman, a primal animalistic scream, sounded over my head again. His voice. His voice called me back home.

_Why did you leave me… I told you to wait for me…_

“Oh gods!” I exclaimed. “He’s alive! He’s still up there!”

Charon shook his head and made another long stroke with his solitary oar, bringing us closer to the gates of Elysium.

“Stop!” I commanded. “Take me back!”

“Your wage was paid one way,” the ferryman scowled at me. “I do not ferry souls back and forth like a common coachman,” he sneered. “You might be a son of Zeus, but I am the ferryman. And I _don’t take anyone back_.”

“I won’t go in,” I said, standing shoulder to shoulder with him. “Take me back this instant!”

“I. Was not. Paid to.”

“Fine. I’ll go back myself.” I pushed off the boat and dove into the placid waters of the Lethe.

Behind me, the ferryman cried out, “You'll drink the water, you stubborn imbecile!”

He need not have worried. I was a good enough swimmer to get across the river of forgetfulness without having to open my mouth.

Like a wayward salamander, I scrambled back on land, where I had originally boarded the ferry.

“What now?” Eris asked. I must say, I was not at all surprised to find her waiting on the other side.

“I shall wait,” I replied.

“Until what?”

“Until he brings me back.”

“That might take a while. I saw your flittermouse,” she snickered cruelly. “He isn’t quite himself, you know.”

“I have time,” I replied, and sat down upon the shore, assuming the lotus position.

He did tell me to wait for him and I hadn’t listened. I had chased him thinking him in danger, I had died thinking him dead. Well, now I knew better. Now I would wait for him, like I should have done in the first place. He had outwaited the sea for me. I would outwait the Styx.


	2. Chapter 2

**France, 1793**

Was this the world into which I had been reborn? Had Goethe summoned me from the depths of the wilderness so that I could bear witness to the descent of mankind? His blood had revived me. It had filled out my veins and my flesh, for the Duke of Alameda had existed in a vessel that belonged to the night and the dark, as he traversed Europe in the coffins of fallen men.

La Raccourcisseuse Patriotique swung her half-moon blade like Zeus’ own thunderbolt. The monarch’s blood spilled on the scaffold. An act so monstrous, so infamous, that nobody could have imagined it possible that it should be attempted. The scent of blood hit my nostrils as it trickled through the cracks of the board, like Charles Stuart’s had dripped one hundred and fifty years ago. Unlike that of Stuart, it dripped onto the frosty ground with a hiss, rather than the fevered brow of a god. I stood without breathing, for I refused to breathe the same air as the king’s murderers.

“Athos,” I whispered my prayer, clutching the talisman in a frozen hand. Rivulets of blood, like capillaries against the wooden boards above my head, like veins throbbing in the necks of mortals where they ran together and swelled. I had drunk from many, but not enough. I had been unable to stop the terror of their reign, the waggon-makers, the shop-keepers, the merchants, the lawyers, the Jacobins, for their name was legion and they were many. Was I too weak still from my long sojourn in the wastelands, during which I dwelled in the shadow of tombstones and the stench of death? My powers had dwindled, until I was reduced to sneaking into peasants’ homes and drinking their blood like a gnat, like a common mare. Like an _upior_ that haunted a village in the Eastern woods.

Athos would have stopped the regicides. He would not have let the plebs walk victorious again, not after what happened in London. But I was powerless. My title, the title of the Spanish duke, which I had stolen and kept like I kept the relic of my god, had become a hazard in this new, twisted world.

I shivered, in my workmen’s clothes, which I had put on to disguise myself as one of the people belonging to the Palace of Meudon. I pulled my handkerchief off my neck and dipped it into the blood of the martyr-king. Its scent, potent and sweet almost like a god’s, called out to me. Behind my closed eyelids, Athos’ face floated up from the abyss of oblivion. Memories, memories of light flooding in through the cracks in my skull, blinding me. Suddenly, the silver thread fluttered almost within my reach, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut as I tried to hold on to it. To pull him back to me.

But the thread had long been severed. Athos was dead, and I knew where he was. The mortal remains of his human vessel rotted in the chapel of Bragelonne, and his soul… his soul frolicked and fought with the demigods and heroes in Elysium. That was where he belonged. He did not belong into this world, the world of savages who defiled sacred blood and upset the ancient, the holy order of creation. I was glad that I had not brought him back, for this would have broken his heart.

I lifted the soaked handkerchief to my lips and _sucked_.

The monsters had caused a proclamation to be read in the streets, declaring that if any women were found abroad on that day, they would be outlawed and might be fired on. As I dragged myself towards Meudon in the midday hour, under a sky in which even the clouds wore mourning, a woman came towards me, descending the mountain path that I climbed. I knew her, and she knew me. She had hoped, she told me, clutching both my hands in her icy grip, that the cannonball fire she heard had marked a tumult in favour of the king. It was Lady Elliott, the Duke of Orléans’ mistress, whose face grew almost as white as mine when I told her that it had marked the moment the august head fell. I tugged the handkerchief from within my doublet, tore off a bit with my teeth and handed it to the lady with the words: “a relic of St. Louis XVI”. It brought her comfort. Her eyes grew bright and her mouth trembled, and I passed on, still and silent and faint with a hunger that could never be stilled.

When they came for me two months later, in the Palace of Meudon, I did not resist. Not one man died, whose hands touched my fine doublet, the doublet befitting a nobleman that I had donned for the occasion. I climbed the scaffold with the sure steps of a monarch, Stuart or Bourbon, I didn’t care. Not one human died that day, not even after I placed my head into the Silence Mill. A prayer left my lips on a soft sigh. _Athos_. Would he laugh, my godling, at the irony? Would it amuse him that a bit of humanity died in the hour when his little chyortik was murdered?

The cold whirr of metal, the sudden sting, and then – nothing. The peaceful nihil and its velvety embrace.

Ice water in my veins, ice chips in my brain, stabbing, piercing, a legion of ants crawling on the inside of my skull, and then – a burst. An explosion of light and heat, a hiss like red-hot iron dropping into water. Then, a voice.

“I knew it was you.” A velvety voice, a woman’s voice. I blinked, clutching at my throat where my freshly severed neck was healing with painful throbs. She stood above me, a dead man by her feet, droplets of blood on her white dress. His blood seeped into the ground, and I reached out, dipped my fingers into the puddle and licked it off. It was still fresh and warm, remnants of life still pulsated within the carcass. I pulled him closer and rammed my fangs into his throat.

When I looked up again, her face came into sharp focus. I frowned and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” she asked with a queer little smile and a light went on behind her eyes.

I clambered to my knees, and then to my feet. She didn’t hold out her hand to help me, but she didn’t flinch away, either. I looked her straight in the eye. “I can guess.”

***

**The Underworld**

Time is a circle, like _samsara_. And endless carousel, a parade of shades and faces, they all came to see the demigod who had refused to enter Elysium.

He had come, too - my Heavenly Father.

“This is becoming embarrassing,” he thought at me from his deeply furrowed eyebrows.

“Then smite me. Or leave.”

I saw Porthos, but he could not see me, for he had wandered again into the Underworld corporeal, whereas I had been a shade. I laughed at the Pythian nature of my vision of the events at Locmaria - it only showed me what I most feared to see, but not the outcome. The gods had played a dirty trick on me, which I would not forget. I reached out for my friend, and for a moment thought he could feel me. But then he was gone and I was alone again.

I saw Jesus - as plain as I remember him - tanned skin and frizzled hair framing his kind, hazel eyes. Barabbas had legs for days. Barabbas had the kind of abs the Romans sculpted onto their armor.

“I heard you were looking for me,” the Messiah of the Christians said.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Mind if I sit here and meditate with you?”

“Don’t you have better things to do?” I scowled at him. “Sinners to save? Sinners to judge?”

“Don’t be like that, Athos. We have much in common, you and I.”

“Because our fathers are both dicks?”

He smiled at me and I thought he looked better when he smiled, a crooked smile of a man unaccustomed to doing so. _This_ was the god Aramis genuflected to when I had come for him in Snagov? At last, I had relented, and allowed him to stay. I don’t know how long we sat there together, on the stygian shore, but it felt like the tectonic plates had shifted around me by the time he left to go back to where ever it is the One God had made his home.

The Buddha, too, had come. I was the first to admit to him that I had failed in letting go of attachment and desire.

“Had you apprehended the true meaning of emptiness?” he had asked.

I shook my head. “I have tried, Master Gautama, but I keep coming back to blindly self-grasping.”

“Then let me ask you this,” the Buddha spoke, sitting down next to me. “Where does your power come from?”

“My power is tied to Olympus,” I replied. “And to the curse. Without it, I would be long dead.”

“Do you think that the gods had made humans in their own image, like the adherents of the One God do?”

“No,” I replied, with certainty, “it was the humans who had made the gods in their image. It’s the only way their minds can grasp the divine.”

“Your sister,” he had said with a sly smile, “she too is made up of her aggregates. If you seek her among her attributes, what do you find?”

“A goddess?” I asked and immediately corrected myself. “A concept?”

“What else?”

“A woman?”

“Which of these things is really Eris?”

“None of them,” I agreed, knowing where he was going with this doctrine. “She lacks inherent existence, like all of us.”

He nodded and rose. “Keep meditating on emptiness. You’ll get there, eventually.”

I’ll get there. Eventually. The cosmos in the blink of an eye. Charon offering me free rides just to get rid of the nuisance of my presence. Hera’s long skirts gliding past as she circled me. Her judgment making the air around me sussurate. The feel of all three heads of Cerberus’ breath on my face. A carnival of divinity. I knew their secrets, and more. I knew when the Titans would rise up to destroy them.

“You can’t stay here forever,” Eris said.

“Don’t worry, sister,” I responded. “I won’t stay here forever. He will resurrect me again.”

“Then why hasn’t he done so already?”

It wasn’t a matter of faith. I knew. I knew Aramis loved me, above all else, above his own ambition, above the taste of blood. I _missed_ him, oh, how I missed him! Yet, all I had to do was close my eyes and summon his face, his lips, his arms to wrap around me, like the circle of time, like the wings of an angel.

“He _ate_ your human pet, you know!” she proclaimed with a dramatic rustle of feathers.

I narrowed my eyes and tightened my lips. If Aramis had allowed himself to eat d’Artagnan, then perhaps our bond had truly been severed. “Well,” I finally replied, steeling myself, “he’d always wanted to. Bon appétit!”

 _No_ , I chided myself immediately. _He is in pain and he needs you,_ I reminded myself.

“He doesn’t love you anymore,” Discord grinned, showing all her teeth. There was nothing appealing about them. I’d rather have her picking those pearly whites up from the stygian shore with broken fingers.

 _I am going to kill you_ , I thought, shutting my eyes against Eris’ jealous gaze. _One of these days, I’ll find a way._

***

**Palace of Meudon, 1793**

“I didn’t expect that your appearance would ever change.” It was with remarkable grace and elegance that she reclined on the skeleton of a chaise-longue, the upholstery of which had been ripped off by revolutionary claws. A crude horse blanket covering the carcass served as the only cushion. Against it, the ivory-coloured satin of her dress, fashionable but for the dark brown specks that spattered its front, gleamed like a cloud that was passing before the sun, like the crest of a wave in moonlight. “It never had, back in the day.”

“You changed too, Madame,” I said, evading her implied question. She was no longer the woman who used to light up the salons of Paris in the days of Richelieu and of the Fronde. Her features had grown sharper, her eyes gleamed with a fire that almost unsettled me. “I am delighted to see that you survived.” I gave her a curt bow from where I stood by the dead fireplace.

The Palace of Meudon had been defiled and violated, the royal insignia had been chiselled off its façade, and the Château Neuf served as a factory where the citizens manufactured hot air balloons. They had moved through the rooms like locust, the hoi polloi, desecrating the halls with the filth that dripped from their boots, their mouths and their souls. I shuddered at the thought of plebeian hands groping the furniture and ripping it apart; plebeian lungs breathing air that was not theirs to breathe. All of a sudden, an image. One of those flashes of memory that tormented me at the most inopportune moments. England. Athos’ face, as he stared at the Groslow creature, the beer-swigging English swine, manfully suppressing the disgust he felt in the presence of such coarseness and brutality. I had felt the same then, and I was glad now: glad that he had been spared this ordeal. The gods, whom I had so often cursed, might have done right by him after all. He was happy in Elysium, while in France, monsters in human guise teemed and swarmed and wallowed in the blood of gods and kings.

She waved a white hand. “Surviving is easy,” she said, and then she laughed. “It’s dying that’s the hard part, isn’t it, Aramis?”

I startled at the sound of that name. I had not heard it spoken by anyone but Porthos in over a century. If I had used a human name, it had been that of the Duke of Alameda, for it was the Duke, not Aramis, who had haunted the wilderness of Europe in the guise of the Eastern demon; and it was the Duke, not Aramis, who had died at the guillotine.

“You look pensive,” the lady continued. “Don’t you agree? How do _you_ remember when to die?”

“When did you die?”

She tossed her bearskin muff aside and took off the turban adorned with two tall ostrich feathers. Her hair was arranged in curls that fell haphazardly over her fox-fur collar and her white neck. Like her dress, her skin appeared to emit a faint gleam. “I forgot,” she said carelessly.

I laughed. “You really are most blasé, Madame,” I said, without attempting to blunt the edge of sarcasm. “You _forgot_ when you died? I am impressed.”

She rose like a cresting wave and stood before me. “I will tell you,” she whispered. “I will tell you everything – if you’ll dance with me.” Her pose, unyielding and graceful at once, her mocking eye and mouth, the swell of her bosom emphasized by the high-waisted line of her dress… Oh, I remembered vividly. I knew why the greatest, most powerful men of Paris had been in her thrall, back in the day.

“A ballet, Madame?” I looked around the ravaged room, the broken chandelier on chipped tiles and the fragment of a mirror that still clung to the soot-blackened wall. “Here? Now?”

“A ballet d’action.” She smirked. “I find it most suited for the kind of tale I have to tell. You were around when M. Noverre introduced it at court?”

“I doubt it.” I smiled, showing her all my teeth. “I spent many years travelling Europe, and didn’t return to France until ten years ago.”

“Why did you return?”

“My friend, Porthos… the Baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds…” I saw no reason to tell her about Goethe, and how he summoned me from the pit of Hell into which I had sunk. “Porthos had returned as well. I went to visit him, and I stayed in France. We both stayed. He joined the Queen’s Dragoons and is now lieutenant colonel in the American Legion, fighting under the command of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.”

“What about your other friend?” The tinge of irony was unmistakable. “The comte de La Fère. He was a dear friend of yours, was he not?”

“He’s not in France.”

“And?”

“And? What?”

“You didn’t answer the second part of my question. He was a dear friend of yours, wasn’t he?”

“You ask many questions, Madame.”

“You are welcome to ask me in turn, if only to demonstrate an interest in my person.”

“Very well.” I looked down at her, the glittering eyes, the luminous skin and dress. “How did you die?” I leaned in and let my gaze trail to the side of her neck. Oh, the vein there was throbbing in lustful anticipation. The beautiful features, the ivory skin, the white dress… I had met women like her on my travels, innocent creatures with rosebud lips and the large, long-lashed eyes of a heifer.

Virginal even if they pressed a babe to their breast, elevated to even greater purity through motherhood. They gazed at me with tearful longing when they spotted me across the room, in the crowd, surrounded by their attendants who protected their virtue and reputation through the strength of their presence and gossipy tongues, yet ready to swoon into my arms at the slightest provocation. Night would come, and with it came I, on silent wings of darkness and desire. The blood of innocents had never held much appeal for me. Virgins, children, servants, peasants… they were bland and insipid. Their blood was less flavoursome even than water, for the sip of cool, fresh water on a hot day could make my tongue prickle in a way that the blood of a second-rate human could not. Their blood certainly was less potent, for my body had remained frail and my skin and bones felt brittle and hollow even after I feasted on it. Yet noble men whose virility and power I used to imbibe on the fields of battle lay now dead by the hands of commoners. And there was something quite appealing about the idea of despoiling the virtuous – especially if they had fooled themselves into believing that the mysterious, dark, unattainable Duke was the love of their life.

The ivory-white dress didn’t fool me. I had seen the cat-eyes kindle. I had seen her move with the long-limbed grace of a leopardess as she pulled in man after man into the elegant routine of her deadly dance. Had she brought me back just for the pleasure of killing me? I wouldn’t put it past her.

I pulled away from her and leaned against the mantelpiece. “Well? Tell me about your death.”

She smiled. “I’ll show you.”

Her body set in motion, and I stood dazed. The supernatural grace of her movements, the way her ivory-white dress enveloped her slender form like mist. Barely tangible, yet more real, more substantial than anything I had seen and felt in decades. I didn’t have to touch her to sense the power coiled in those strong limbs, as she lifted her arms above her head and the story of her death unfolded in the ballet d’action, one dainty step after the other.

She, the Frondeuse, died suddenly when Mazarin had sent his henchmen to arrest her. But even then, there had been rumours that she had faked her death, and a legend was born. She had fled to England and married an English lord. She returned to France, she lived, she fought, she married again – a bandit chief, this time – she consorted with the greatest of her era, before the legend permitted her to die at last.

“When was that?” I asked, after her tale had come to an end and the swirling mist settled again.

“In 1741.” She laughed. “I would have been one hundred and thirty by then, by human reckoning.”

“Humans,” I wrinkled my nose. “They are blind to such matters. In our Parisian days, we kept company with a human who never noticed that neither of us three grew older and that we couldn’t keep track of our ages.”

“Richelieu knew.”

“Ah! The cardinal was a great man!” I thought wistfully of the virility and power that had coursed through him and that I had never truly sampled. “He knew who would make a valuable ally. Is that why he showered you with favours, Madame? Why, rumour has it he preferred you to his own niece, even.”

“Impossible,” she shot back. “Dear Armand always had the greatest esteem for the bond of blood. As, I believe, have you.”

For a moment, silence fell between us, as we eyed each other across the room. She was… One would be tempted to call her ethereal, if not for the impression that a core of Damascus steel poked through the tears in her soul and skin, like the carcass of the chaise-longue poked through the horse blanket. Buckingham had been a fool that he had neglected her for the sake of his star-crossed romance with Anne of Austria, whose beauty I had always found overrated. The Great Condé, on the other hand, had not been a fool, but a conspirator, the soul of every cabal, and what successes he had reaped, I was sure that he had her to thank for them: the fey danseuse, the Dame Blanche who rewarded those who either amused or assisted her, or both. My acquaintance with her had always been fleeting and superficial, despite the fact that our interests often coincided. But even though her salon had been one of the most brilliant centres of society, I had rarely set foot in it. For my ambitions had steered me towards the respected and the respectable, while she was a woman lost in reputation. One who was known to have no relations with a man but such as were pernicious to the safety of his soul. And – most importantly and most dangerously, perhaps – one who received free-thinkers at her house.

Everything was changed now. The world had turned topsy-turvy, old loyalties were dead or meaningless, the hunters had become the hunted. In this new world, I had emerged a shadow and she had fetched me from behind the veil of death. She had not done it from the goodness of her heart. If she did not want to kill me, it was because she needed me, and for the first time in decades, my curiosity was roused.

“What do I call you, Madame?” I said, accepting her unspoken offer of an alliance.

She smirked. “Do you not remember?”

“Did you not change your name?”

“What for?” It was spoken with a careless shrug. “It was never a great name, not an important one. The name of a courtesan, a footnote in history that nobody will remember.”

“Mademoiselle de Lorme,” I bowed and kissed her hand with much courtly reverence. She tilted her head and exposed her white neck to me, where fey blood thudded under human skin.

She smiled. “Call me Marion, Aramis.” 

***

**Troy, 1193 - 1184 BC**

Sing, O Muse, of the golden apple of Discord.

Even then, Eris thought, no one had wanted to play with her. Thetis and Peleus: the wedding of a generation. O Thetis, the sea nymph forced to marry her own rapist. All the other gods had come, flocking for a feast. They do love a good love story, even if of dubious consent, especially one that ends in a demigod being conceived who is bound for greatness.

Athos, too, was bound for greatness. Still, no one saw it but her.

“You play a dangerous game, sister,” her fraternal twin Ares had said.

“What do you care? As long as there’s war,” she responded and took off in his chariot. Why did the he-deities always get all the best horses?

Athos, he was slightly older than a boy, not yet a man, although she supposed he fancied himself one. What nonsense had the King of Ithaca filled his head with? Loyalty and honor or games and deception? She watched from the walls of Troy while the son of Zeus gave himself to his erastes. Even there, in Odysseus’ bed, his body twisted and turned like a tornado, like a force of great annihilation. He had been made for war, not love.

Unlike Thetis, Eirene did not hide her demigod son, so sly Odysseus had no trouble finding him. “Come, Athos. I have much to show you,” the wily mortal had said. She had said the same thing, and the son of Zeus had followed her, ever ready to learn.

She did not touch him, not yet. There would be plenty of time for that later, when he ripened into the warrior she knew he would become.

“You should be the greatest of the Achaeans,” she had said to him and his young brow set in a furrow. “Not Achilles. Who is Achilles, but a son of a jumped up and besmirched sea nymph! You, who are the son of my own Father, should lead the Greeks to victory.”

“His father is a King. He leads the Myrmidons,” he said with a faint blush.

“Your Father is the King of the _Gods_ , Athos!”

“What good does it do me? His so-called love got my mother banished from Poseidon’s Temple.” Ire rose up in him like a beautiful flame that she could stoke. “Achilles’ father may have taken his mother by force, but at least he’s not a bastard!”

“Kill Achilles!”

“What?” he drew back. Perhaps she’d been too hasty. “Why?”

“It has been prophesied, Troy will not fall as long as Achilles lives. Is this what Odysseus dragged you from Thira for? Is this what Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia for? While you and Achilles stood by and watched?”

The lines of his mouth were drawn tightly. It would have been easier to talk him into killing the King of Mycenae, but his time too would come. All in due course. They would all leave Troy bearing the scars of this war, if only on their souls. All but him.

“No,” he finally said. “Achilles is my friend.”

“Achilles is a fool,” she spat, taking another step closer to him.

“Your name is Discord and Discord is what you sow,” he smiled a boyish smile at her, suddenly softening. His gaze caressed the outline of her wings, and she brushed one over his shoulder, letting the quills tickle his neck.

“Were it not for me sowing discord, we would not be at war now, Athos. And you like war, don’t you?” she had asked as she watch him run his hands through the mane of one of Ares’ faithful horses driving her chariot. He was good with animals, and other wildlings. He was fearless, but not dimwitted, in the way that other fearless men were.

“I like war,” he replied and smiled again. There was no trace of deception in his look. “I like you, too, Eris.”

She had wrapped Eirene’s son into her wings and held him close, swearing that no god or goddess would ever take him from her.

Years flew by, spurred by the Anemoi and Fates. Much blood had soaked the battlefields of Troy. So many golden threads spun out, measured, and cut. Never a dull moment for Olympians.

“Why do you cry, son of Zeus?” her fingers ran through his hair. No longer a boy, but a man now. A warrior. A death-bringer. His body, so cut and chiseled, a litany of scars that she had caressed with her fingers and feathers. How many times on the battlefield had she saved his life, so he would live to kill another day?

“Patroclus is dead,” he replied.

“He was a mortal. Mortals die.”

“He was family.”

He blamed her for this. She knew, even though he would not open his mouth to tell her. She had seized Achilles by the hair, she had hardened his heart against Agamemnon. But soon, Achilles too would be dead, and Athos would make the Trojans bleed for taking his friend's life.

“Not _your_ family.”

“Odysseus says,” he spoke through tears that choked him still, “he says… it isn’t just the ties of blood that a family make.”

“Odysseus!” she spat out the cursed name. “When was the last time the King of Ithaca has even touched you?”

“What difference does that make?” he startled, his eyes of brown agate rimmed with red fixing upon her own obsidian eyes.

“He never cared for you like I do. He doesn’t want what I want for you. He wants it for himself.”

“What is it you want for me, sister?”

“Immortality.”

“But, Eris, I am mortal,” he smiled and his forehead pressed against hers.

“You don’t have to be, little brother.”

In the days and nights that followed, he stood clad in his armor, encased in leather and bronze, with the blaze of the funeral games behind him, and she ran her fingers over the beloved contours of his face. He would make the streets of Troy run with blood.

“Will you go into the belly of the beast, brother?” she asked, speaking of Odysseus’ wooden horse. That magnificent ruse that would live in infamy for all eternity.

“I will do what I’m commanded,” he responded. He had been a good boy, he had always done as he was told.

“What Odysseus commands you,” her lips twitched. Odysseus would not see the shores of Ithaca, if she had any say in it. “What will you do when the war is over, Athos?”

“Return to Thira, I suppose.”

“Thira is no place for you. You are destined for glory.”

“Why does my destiny matter to you, sister?” He walked closer, letting her wrap him up into the fold of her wings. He stood tall now, taller than the other mortals, and his lips brushed against her forehead.

“Because I… You matter to me.”

“You are Discord. It does not behoove you to speak of love.”

“I did not say ‘love.’” She tried to pull away, but his hands held her hips even through the armor she wore against him. “But I will say it to you. If you like.”

“Tell me you love me, Eris.”

“First, let Troy fall and bring back our whorish sister Helen to the man she doesn’t love.”

“I will sack Troy for you. If you say you love me.”

“You are stubborn, Athos, son of Zeus.”

He had loved and venerated her, as a woman, as a goddess, and as a concept. She saw her entire being wrapped up in him. He was the alpha and the omega. He could not die. He _would_ not die.

“All right, then. I love you,” she had said and sealed his fate with a kiss.


	3. Chapter 3

**Flanders, Ghent, March 1815**

_Springtime, Beloved!_

A skein of geese flew north above my head, and I followed them with my eyes until they dissolved in the blue-grey skies. How many times had I returned to France in Persephone’s wake? In this new era, the Goddess of Spring no longer walked the earth among the mortals. I had seen neither hide nor hair of any of the Old Gods since-

 _Since Athos’ death_.

I narrowed my eyes against the glaring brightness and clenched my teeth. My decision was final, my path was set. I would scale Mount Olympus once again, and I would bring him back. I would return him to a world that had been pushed off kilter and I would face his indifference, his proclamations of friendship with my head held high. This time around, I knew what I had to expect.

_The last of the demigods._

And yet, the path I had followed ever since I left Frankfurt was a meandering one. The green abyss of the German Forest had swallowed me for several days, and I had emerged on the other side, back in the land of the living, with my head full of memories. Soon, the blue flower would be in bloom again, hidden in the furthest, wildest depth of the forest, where it belonged. It did not belong in human hands, no matter how worthy they might fancy themselves, with their fleeting passions and their shallow loves and their childish notion of what they, in their delusions, called ‘eternity’. A memory resurfaced briefly, a sharp stab as light flashed through my brain. Novalis, who had dragged the blue flower into the light and turned the sacred, secret plant into a gaudy symbol, had been dead for more than ten years. ‘Sudden rush of blood’, they’d said. Consumption. A wasting disease had claimed him, as it had claimed his friend Schiller not long before.

The meandering path had been supposed to lead me to Paris, but Paris had fallen, the king had fled from Bonaparte, the Bourbons were once again on the brink of disgrace and defeat. Had they not proven themselves to be the most powerful warriors and kings? Would I, should I really force Athos to witness this degeneration of mores? Humans aspired to rule over domains that did not belong to them. They no longer knew their place. Poets, seeking spiritual communion with the Old Ones. The fools! Had the One God not proven himself to be the most powerful warrior and king? From his goat-hide tent in the desert, he had conquered the world and had subjugated the Old Gods and made them his vassals. They had been banished into the dark to guard the hidden fiefdoms and protect the sacred mysteries from humans. That was the order of the world now, and the poets were upsetting it with their words as much as the Corsican upstart upset it with his sword.

King Louis XVIII had fled to Ghent, and that was where I arrived on a mild spring evening, carried on the breeze of Eurus. Where the king was, was his Maison du Roi also, and where his Maison du Roi was, was Alfred de Vigny: a youth of eighteen, whose mistress I needed to see on urgent business.

“He promised to immortalise me in one of his works one day, the sweet boy,” Marion informed me when I paid her a visit later that night. She was sprawled in the sheets with one of her legs thrown over mine and a cat curled up on her stomach. She always had cats around her. Or foxes. Or owls, or ravens, or even the occasional nightingale. A few years ago, when she accompanied me on an errand to Normandy, she picked up a lutin on the way, who served her faithfully as long as she travelled through his country and who tormented one or two men quite ingeniously when they had failed to please her. They liked to pick up familiars, the Dames Blanches, and Marion was no exception.

“How is the king?” I asked.

“Gouty. How is Goethe?”

“Still alive.” A bit weakened, perhaps, but nothing he wouldn’t recover from. I propped my head up on my elbow and watched the fae’s lynx face turn towards me.

“How are _you_ , Aramis?” She regarded me coolly with dark eyes. As dark as her hair, striking against her translucent skin that always looked as if it glowed from the inside, like foxfire, and just as cool to the touch.

“I’m quite well.” I inclined my head. “As always when I find myself in your company, Madame.”

“Oh dear,” she sighed. “Having your head cut off had dulled the edge of your wit. I can’t imagine the Aramis I once knew to serve me a line so utterly devoid of originality and charm.”

I started to smile, but aborted the manoeuvre instantly, because it made my lips hurt. She was not done with me yet. “I doubt Marie de Rohan would have given you the time of day now. She loved you for your beauty and wit.”

A sneering smirk came easily to me. “Marie de Rohan was in no condition to make any demands on beauty or wit the last time I saw her. She was _quite_ derelict.”

“She inhabited a mortal body. Unlike you.” The purring cat twisted under Marion’s caressing fingers, and she continued, looking at me steadily. “You weren’t there when she died.”

“No.”

“Why not? That’s the least you owed to your lover of many centuries.”

“Were you there?”

“She was almost eighty when she died. At that point, she must have been glad to turn back to water and have it over and done with. A mortal’s death is so undignified.”

I raised my eyebrows coolly. “Well? _Were_ you there?”

“A mistake.” Marion shook her head in mock-exasperation and her dark hair tumbled down her white shoulders. “I was recognised and had to admit that I had faked my death, back in the day, to escape Mazarin’s henchmen.”

“Yes, you really botched that one up,” I nodded. “How often has Marion de Lorme died?”

“At least I haven’t been haunting Europe as the Duke of Alameda for over a century.”

“The Duke of Alameda is a phantom. Nobody believes he truly exists, and his non-existence lacks true mystique. He hasn’t even made it into any poems yet, and you know that those Romantics latch on to anything that’s even vaguely eerie. That’s how irrelevant the Duke is on the grand scale of things.”

“And that doesn’t bother you, Aramis? You, who used to be so ambitious. The awareness that your achievements are going unrecognised must be gnawing away at you.”

“I have come to appreciate the wisdom of hiding in plain sight.” Too late, alas. Too late.

“Like your friend Porthos.” She grinned. “Now there’s a man who cannot blend into the background. And yet, he had never been exposed?”

“Never.” I shook my head, smiling fondly at the thought of my Titanic friend. “Never even came close.”

“Where is he now? I should like to see him again, his bold approach to fashion and colours has always fascinated me. It’s a shame he never appeared at court in the days of Louis XVI. I would have loved to admire him in full court dress.”

“Ah, the days of Louis XVI, he passed those mostly in the nude,” I said. “Which, I assure you, is a formidable spectacle in its own right. In Saint-Domingue,” I added. It had taken me a while to realise that the heathen ‘Haiti’ of which Porthos used to speak in such glowing tones was the French king’s most prized and valuable colony. That explained why he had returned to France laden with gold.

Her gaze travelled down my body, lingered, and travelled back up. “Is he still there?”

“That is what I’m going to Normandy to ascertain. I had not heard from Porthos in a while. The steward of his estates must know something.”

“I take it you’re not going to call on his widow on the way?”

We both laughed. Porthos had, in a move that surprised no-one, married an innkeeper’s daughter in Villers-Cotterêts. “She’s a delightful palate-cleanser, Aramis,” he had told me, glowing with pride and love. “And after all those years living with a heathen… I mean frolicking with the Ondines of the Caribbean, I fancy a spot of Christian marriage. I always liked your old mate Jesus, I wouldn’t want to offend him.”

The palate-cleanser was a widow now, for her Titanic paramour and devoted husband had succumbed to a sudden attack of wanderlust befitting a Romantic poet. One day, he set off on his travels again, leaving her and the offspring he had managed to beget during their short-lived marriage behind. He had written to me from Nantes, on his way to board the ship that would carry him across the Atlantic, asking me to explain everything to his beloved and the nippers.

_Dear comrade citizen Aramis,_

_You have chided me, when last we met, and accused me of being as ardent a follower of the Republic as I had been of Jesus Christ, Ave Him, etc., etc. Moreover, you invoked Athos’ name and shamed me for lowering myself to such a ‘plebeian cause.’ Well, I have reflected of late on what you have said, and I declare, that Napoleon is a right wanker! You were right, of course, just as you were right when you said we were insane to invade Russia in winter. Only an utter wanker would have ordered an army to do that! No, decidedly, I will no longer serve him!_

_And, as you know, I tried to entertain myself, since the untimely passing of my friend Saint-Georges, by being a family man. (How I miss old Saint-Georges! When you are inevitably reunited with Athos, you must not tell him that my friend Saint-Georges was a revolutionary, but rather refer to him as a musician - which is true, so Athos would not find such talk objectionable. Saint-Georges wrote the loveliest of serenades for my wedding!) But I realize now that marrying a woman of a fertile age has certain consequences, the least of which is having her live to watch only one of us grow old. Plus, children, it turns out, are monsters. Even mine! And they’re quite adorable!_

_My friend, what I write to say is that I’m returning to the Caribbean to join the slave revolt there. That will show that Corsican wanker for trying to withhold my pension! You will be a dear and drop in on my beloved daffodils, won’t you? Make my excuses to them in the way that only you can? I know I can count on your ingenuity and your discretion, always._

_Until we meet again,  
Porthos_

Porthos’ words moved me deeply, as might have been expected. His letter had reached me as I was setting off for England to run an errand with Marion. When I informed her about Porthos’ assignment, she agreed that it was an important one that required immediate attention and that I should devote myself to it as as soon as possible. Once we’d dealt with the little matter on the other side of the Channel.

Alarming rumours had reached us of an Englishman who experimented with silver pictures, capturing shadows and silhouettes, capturing _souls_ on paper. “Camera obscura, pah!” Marion had sneered as she examined the results of his experiments: real-world scenes that stuck forever to glass or paper - lifeless, yet lifelike. It was a dangerous weapon in the hands of a mortal fool. For when he turned the eye of his camera obscura at the shadows, the veil lifted and the creatures that dwelled there were forced out of hiding. He chased them in the blemishes, in the blotches and imperfections that appeared on paper. The closer he looked the more shadows appeared in the corners, invisible to the human eye, yet rendered visible on canvas. 

The Old Ones had been banished underground, into the roots and thickets of forests and depths and darkness of mountain caves. Sapped of their powers, shadows of their old selves, they lingered, they endured, they survived. They must not be found, not now; not after the mortals’ uprising that had upset the old order. 

Fortunately, young Thomas Wedgwood had never been a healthy man. Frail and sickly from his childhood, an invalid as an adult, he passed away at the tender age of thirty-four. 

Later that year, I arrived in the north of France to comfort Porthos’ grieving wife and put her mind at ease. “A cancerous growth that had eaten its way through your husband’s insides. You nursed him in his final hours,” I had told the bereaved woman, smiling at her with all my teeth. “Very sad.”

My first meeting with Madame Porthos was to remain the last, and I told Marion so that night in Ghent, while her white body pressed up against mine and her breath stirred her locks and mine that had spilled over her chest: “A commoner past her prime,” I lifted my own hand and perused it in the soft glow; it was white and long-fingered still, albeit thinner, frailer than it once used to be. “What use would it be to remind her of him? She’s a respectable widow, that’s more than many women in her position can claim.”

Marion nodded. “A respectable widow, yes. It is the best fate that can befall a woman. That’s why I’ve made sure to bury several husbands, it doesn’t get more respectable than that. And, unlike M. Porthos’ good lady wife, I witnessed their burials with my own eyes.”

“Very wise, my beautiful white widow,” I said and rolled onto my side, pressing my hips into the swell of her thigh. “I always admired your brain.”

She glanced down and shifted her thigh, rubbing against my groin. “Did you, Aramis?” Her dark doe eyes, so queerly misplaced in the triangular lynx face, looked into the very depth of my soul. “Even though I used to sleep with the Cardinal?”

“You slept with the most powerful man of France. How could I not admire that?” I lifted her hand to my lips and bit into the pad of her finger. “Not even Marie de Rohan had managed it.”

She laughed at those words. “You flatterer,” she muttered and dragged her nail over my lower lip. “You, who always enjoyed the protection of the most powerful personage in the kingdom. I told you before, Aramis: you were always the greatest courtesan of us all.”

The most powerful personage in the kingdom. I pondered over her words as she lay asleep by my side and I watched Auntie Selene wander over the skies, followed by her sister Eos who tinted the eastern sky pink. I left Marion before the first cock-crow. Normandy could wait. Everything could wait. My path was clear. To Bragelonne. To Bragelonne!

_Springtime, Beloved._

***

**Mt. Olympus, Stefani Peak, spring 1815**

I had never felt this way before, like being poured out of the neck of a bottle, my astral aspects constricted and poured anew into my reconstituted vessel. I gasped for air, but my lungs were not filled with Styx water. I shielded my eyes from the sun, but only since they were so used to the darkness. The lightning bolt of memories I had been expecting did not come. But wait - something was off. This strange _expectation_. I remembered - the lightning bolt would not come. I _remembered_.

I opened my eyes and his face came into focus. Long, wavy, black hair covered by a thin, grey hood, shielding his paleness from sunlight, and from my Father’s eyes, no doubt. His lips looked parched and the skin around his eyes appeared so delicate that I could make out the tiny capillaries in the dark circles underlying their radiant beauty. _So beautiful._ Like being blinded by the sun all over again.

“Aramis,” my lips formed the beloved name. “My Aramis. My angel.” 

How long had I waited for him? No matter. I reached my hand towards his face, but he flinched away and my hand dropped.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice hollow and constrained, as if he had gotten unaccustomed to the use of his vocal cords.

“I knew you would bring me back, my love,” I replied, pushing myself up onto my elbows. I swayed, his hands shot out to prop me up. His eyes darted all over my body and I followed their path as well. Two arms, two legs, my cock. Everything seemed in order, except a strange, band-like scar around the forefinger of my left hand. “Flittermouse,” my hand grasped his, “What’s wrong?”

“ _My love?_ ” he parroted me, “ _Flittermouse_? You don’t remember… you don’t… you can’t…”

I understood. I pulled him into my arms and pressed my lips to his hair.

“I do,” I replied. “I remember everything, Aramis. I never went through the gates of Elysium. I…” I briefly let go, to turn his chin up so that he could see, so he could understand what I was telling him, “I waited. I didn’t want to cease loving you again.”

A strangled sound tore from his throat, closer to the cry of a beast than a man.

“You waited? For a hundred and fifty years?” he choked out.

“I _love_ you,” I told him, and this time, he allowed my hands to come up and cradle his face. His wan, beautiful face. So dear to me, even more dear now that my eyes had grown so weary of not seeing it except in my memories and meditations.

And then, an amazing, beautiful, terrible thing happened. More terrible to me for having never witnessed it before. More beautiful for the same reason. Aramis blinked, and two giant, limpid tears streaked down his face, like pearls on alabaster.

“My beloved,” I whispered, catching the precious droplets with my fingers, like the rare gems that they were. And that had been the breaking of the dam.

My name tore from his lips, like a cry of agony, and he collapsed into my arms, body wracked with sobs so violent that I feared for his ribcage. Then again, his bones had always been less fragile than they appeared.

“Athos…” His face felt wet against my naked shoulder. “Athos… _forgive me_.” 

“Angel, what for?” He trembled like a string in my arms. His nails dug into my shoulder blades even as my hands stroked through his hair, caressing the nape of his neck.

“I... killed you again,” he spoke through tears. So many tears, how many centuries worth had he been holding in? I tried to wipe them with my hands, leaving only dusty streaks on his high cheekbones. His eyelids were swollen, the whites of his eye were flushed with red. “And then I was too ashamed, too scared to bring you back…”

“Hush, angel, none of that is your fault.”

It seemed that any show of kindness only destroyed another wall inside him, for with each word I uttered, a new font burst forth from his eyes. He was beginning to have trouble breathing as he gasped and choked on his own tears.

I felt at a loss for what to do. “My love,” I whispered. I drew him closer, I pressed his body into mine. No, but there was one thing that I knew I could do. The one thing that would make everything all right again, for both of us.

He whimpered in my embrace, and I turned my head away, exposing the side of my neck to him. And then I gingerly guided him where I wanted him, until I felt the heat of his breath and the brush of his arid lips on my flesh. I shivered with pleasure. The sound of the dropping of his fangs caressed my ear drum. He shifted in my arms, he sniffled fighting back the tears, and then I felt the gentle pressure of his fangs along my neck.

 _So gentle._

He whimpered again, pulling back for a moment. My blood sprayed him, mingling with his tears. The noise that he made was of an animal in pain, and then his lips latched onto my jugular again.

“Yes, that’s good,” I whispered, falling back onto the slab before the Throne of Zeus and looking up into the celestial canopy above my head. “Don’t stop, Aramis. Don’t stop, my kitten.”

His fingers had unclenched and his arms held me, just like the wings of an angel, and he drank from me with care like he had never taken before. I closed my eyes. My body throbbed with life and love. I felt complete again.

A hundred and fifty years, did he say?

“I knew you would come for me,” I sighed, weighless myself beneath his weight. “I never doubted you.”

“Then why did you die?” he muttered into my neck, where the gentlest licks of his tongue had healed over my wounded flesh and he lay sated.

“I thought… I thought you were dead. I could not bear to live in a world bereft of your presence. But then I heard your voice on the ferry, and knew I had been deluded.”

A shiver ran up his spine and he pressed down into me again, as if he wanted to burrow inside my body.

“Tell me again,” he whispered and I knew immediately what he had needed from me.

“I love you, angel.”

“I waited too long…”

“I love you, my sweet flittermouse.”

“I couldn't face going without again…”

“Everything will be all right now. I promise.”

“Forgive me.”

“I promise, my love.”

***

**Litochoro, spring 1815**

We had come down the mountain by the time the stars were brightest in the night sky and the port of Litochoro slept. Even in the dark, I could see that the small fishing village had grown into something resembling a town. The beaches on which we had lain with each other would not provide us with quite as much privacy in this new century.

Aramis walked up to a white, two-storey house, and a local man rose to greet him, addressing him in Greek as his “Kyrios,” and held out a key.

“Go home,” Aramis commanded, quietly, and took the key from the man’s extended hand.

“Who was that, Aramis?”

“I don’t know.”

“He called you his Master.”

“He was in my thrall,” my beloved said and unlocked the door, letting me go before him into the small but airy apartment on the top floor.

“You no longer have a servant?” I asked, looking around for a candle or another source of light. Offering no reply, Aramis opened the window, letting the moonlight in, and then he placed his hands over mine as I located an oil lamp on the small writing table. “What is it, love?”

“No light,” he whispered and took my hand into his again.

With my free hand, I pulled the hood of his cloak from his head, and then circled his waist, pulling him in. I brought up our entwined hands and kissed his knuckles, and then brushed his hair away from his face. Even in the darkness of the room, I could see how pale he had been. That pallor that struck me as his beauty upon my resurrection now troubled me. I wrapped him into my arms and pressed my face against his, holding him as he trembled like a leaf in my embrace. He felt so light, as if his bones had turned hollow, as if all the marrow inside them had dried up. I had been the one who had been dead, so what had become of my flittermouse?

I pulled back, searching his eyes with my own. It occurred to me, we had not even kissed since my resurrection. I had given him my blood, but not the simplest, human gesture of affection. My thumb pressed gently against his lower lip, noting how much thinner it felt to my touch.

“Beloved,” I whispered, a question unasked.

“Athos,” his reply was barely more than a sigh but it scorched my lips and I pressed our mouths together, as gently and tenderly as I could. He melted into my embrace and again I felt the lightness of his limbs against mine.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whispered into his hair, as I cradled the back of his head in my hand, pressing him closer to me. His body convulsed in my arms and another sob escaped him. “It’s going to be all right, angel. I’ll never leave you again,” I promised.

“You can’t know that,” he choked out through tears which had risen up from somewhere deep within after centuries of being forbidden to flow.

I picked him up into my arms, in a way that would have elicited protestations from him in the past, and carried him past the white curtain that separated the sleeping quarters towards the bed. I set him down gently, and climbed onto the mattress, curling my body around his. His hands, if only by muscle memory alone, pulled my shirt off my shoulders, and I shrugged out of it, tossing it to the floor. His shirt followed suit, and I finally felt the press of his skin against my own as his arms clung to me.

I pressed kisses along the side of his face. His face, which still bore the dampness of his tears.

One hundred and fifty years, he had said. They had broken him. The years I have been away, the gods who have separated us, the world events that had kept us apart. They had broken my chyortik, who had been unbreakable. They would _pay_.

I kissed the soft, warm skin of his neck, and the shell of his ear, and the part of his skull where his hair grew out in softest tendrils, right at the nape. I breathed in his scent again. I pried his lips open with my lips, and kissed his teeth. My hips pressed down against his own. I could feel heat rise between our bodies. Our bodies remembered each other, effortlessly. 

“No,” I stopped when I felt his hand sneak inside the trousers I had been wearing. The clothes he had brought for me fit perfectly. He _did_ remember. 

“Don’t you want me?” he asked, his fingers clenching into the grooves between my ribs.

“I _do_ ,” I said, and pulled him into my arms again, pressing soft kisses to his cheekbones and along his jaw. Another sob escaped him in reply and I felt his body shake underneath me. “But right now you need to take my blood,” I whispered and guided his mouth to my neck.

“No. No, that’s not why I brought you back,” he protested, the beautiful idiot.

“I know that, Aramis. But I need you to drink.”

“I was ready for you not to love me.”

“I _need_ you to. Drink. Please.” _Gods, I beg you, let me fix him,_ I prayed. And then, _and then_...

I pulled him against my body and felt the poorly suppressed sobs again, and then that strangely gentle pressure of his fangs as they breached my skin. His hand lay against the other side of my neck. He curled into me and let me cradle him as he drank. I closed my eyes and surrendered to the familiar rhythm of my heart pumping my blood into his mouth.

“Let me hold you,” I whispered, as I ran my hands up and down his back. _Let me make you whole again._ Over his spine, and his neck, and his hips, and his ribs, until I could feel the marrow in his bones come alive again. Until I could feel him pressing against me with all his weight. And then I slept in his embrace, at last.

***

His blood pumped through my veins, distending them, filling them out, filling me out from the inside, like a fruit that ripens under the rays of the summer sun. His blood pumped life through my veins, and his heartbeat guided mine. I had been dead, and I was alive again.

The godling in my arms slept the sleep of the living. The last time I had held him, he had been cold and stiff, and his bones crumbled to dust under my claw-like hands.

I disentangled my fingers from his hair and fumbled for the reliquary that lay against my chest. The sacred amulet. The talisman that had tethered me to him during all those years. His fingers had traced its outline while he was mapping the contours of my body with his lips and hands, but he hadn’t said anything. For a fleeting moment, we both glanced at the thin white scar around his forefinger, but neither of us said a word. I could not speak. My lungs were empty, my mouth didn’t belong to me. It was but a vessel for the divine essence that Athos had poured into me to resurrect me.

“I love you.” I startled at the sound of my own voice. I had spoken the words aloud that had thrummed through my veins, my muscles, prickled on my skin and erupted on my tongue. In my arms, Athos stirred.

“Mmh..,” he murmured into the crook of my neck. “I love you too, Aramis.”

Such tenderness… velvety and soft, caressing my aching muscles and my aching heart. My throat tightened and bitterness mingled with the sweetness that coated my taste buds as tears rose up again. I had forgotten what it was to cry. A touch of his, a whispered caress, a soft, languid look from beneath those long dark lashes made me remember.

I swallowed the tears before they reached my eyes and pressed my feverish lips to his forehead with unexpected urgency. His heartbeat quickened. He understood my intentions well, and his were in accord with mine. I reached down and felt the evidence under my own hand, as his cock swelled against my palm, as a damp patch blossomed on the linen where I touched him. “Athos,” I whispered heatedly, suddenly impatient to taste him again. He groaned and slammed his hips into mine.

How _human_ his skin tasted. Acerbic and salty, covered in patches of dried blood that melted under the swipes of my tongue as I crawled down the length of his body, worshipping every bit of it with the ardour of a seraph. The frantic beat of his heart beneath my palm, beating out the staccato of I-love-you-I-love-you in time with my own. The long flanks and narrow hips. The huge, swollen cock that strained towards my mouth, hot with the blood that thudded and boiled within it. I licked across the damp tip, and Athos moaned, angling his hips and spreading his legs in shameless abandon.

Another lick, and my head spun. The taste was as potent as ever, as if his sojourn at Stygian shores had left no traces upon his body. I sucked his cock in greedily, panting as it filled my mouth. I didn’t stop until my nose, my face pressed into his groin. His vein throbbed against my tongue, his blood called out to me through the thin membrane of his human skin. 

He raised his head and looked down at me from beneath heavy, swollen lids. His eyes, his panting mouth were feverish, and I was ravenous. “More,” Athos gasped. His hand convulsed and clutched at the sheets. “Please, Aramis.”

Beneath my hand, his thigh tautened, and a rush of lust churned through me. The vein pulsated against my palm: a harsh, needy beat. His last resurrection had left him weak and drained. This time, it had filled him with inexhaustible energy. My mouth was slick with his blood, and the taste of him made my tongue prickle. _More_. Always.

His cock slipped out of my mouth and we both groaned. I blew a cooling breath across his damp flesh and closed my lips gently around the underside of his cock, where his blood was ready to burst forth.

I spoke a prayer with my lips around his cock, mouthing and lapping at his heated skin with every word. Beneath me, around me, his undulating hips, his trembling thighs, his shuddering stomach, and the blood, the blood that cascaded through him. I wrapped my hand around his cock and dragged my mouth along his groin, along the crease of his thigh, down to where his pulse was the strongest.

“Yes?”

“ _Please._ ”

His skin broke, his flesh parted for me, and my fangs pushed in deeply into the soft tissue and distended vein. I sucked in his surging blood in greedy gulps, and inside my fist, his cock throbbed in time with my swallows. I worshipped him with my mouth as he poured life into me, divine and inexhaustible. Athos groaned, and the flow of his blood changed: faster, sweeter, thud after thud after thud, as his climax claimed him and he emptied himself in my hand and in my mouth. For a moment, I felt him hover, breathless, motionless, and then the surge of blood was back and I choked. My generous godling; he had died for me, and he had returned to bring me salvation.

I lapped at the wound until it closed and crawled up his body, kissing his skin with trembling lips: the hollow above his hip, the ridge of his ribs, the dip of his navel. Licking his seed off his stomach, trailing a wet path up his sternum, until I met his mouth and it opened for me. That beautiful, generous mouth, hot and greedy as he kissed me with breathless abandon. His fingers dipped into my flesh as he clung to me with both hands and our bodies tangled around each other like vines. He was adrift again, I could feel it: slipping away into Morpheus’ realm, where I could not follow. His hand twitched in mine, his head rolled to the side, and I pressed my open mouth to the side of his throat and then to his shoulder. “I love you, Athos.”

My voice was hoarse and frail. It was barely more than a breath, but it followed him into his dreams. He would not forget me while he slept, just like he had not forgotten me when he died.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So many things happen.

**Litochoro, spring 1815**

In the port of Litochoro, Aramis lay curled into my armpit. His eyes, no longer puffy and red, were closed. His lips were no longer dry, but rather kiss-swollen and flushed with blood. It was my blood that circled through his veins. He had brought me back to life, but I felt as if it was I who had raised him from his tomb.

I traced the outline of his features with gentle fingers. The fine cut of his jaw, the high forehead, the delicate slope of his nose, the long, sinewy lines of his neck. I sought my beloved among his aggregates, and I found him. I had understood emptiness, I have apprehended all that the Buddha wanted to teach me. I had, from my disembodied state, attained what he had called Enlightenment and Nirvana. And it still did not compare to the perfect bliss I felt lying next to my beloved.

The shadow of a smile trembled on his lips. He stretched like a large cat and wrinkled his nose, reaching out for me blindly.

“Kitten,” I murmured into the warm skin of his neck.

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” he sighed against my chest. I ran my arms down his back, along his ribs, I scooped up the globes of his ass with both my palms and pressed him closer to my body.

“If you’re dreaming, you’re about to have a very inappropriate dream.”

He laughed for the first time since he had pulled me back from the Underworld. I had missed his laughter. That silently expressed joy, like a secret he only shared with me. My heart swelled and my cock jolted to attention again, meeting his twin hardness as he sprawled on top of me, one leg slung across my thighs.

“There’s nothing inappropriate about this,” he mewled against my collarbones.

My hands cradled the back of his skull and his lips pressed against my chest.

“I’ve missed you,” I sighed.

“You have no idea,” he whispered, rocking his hips into me. His cheek felt moist against the palm of my hand again and I drew my thumb over the curve of his cheekbones wondering how long it would take for his inner wounds to heal. “It’s been so long since anyone has _touched_ me.”

For a moment, I worried my heart might break again. Break for _him_. But before I could do or say anything else, the curtains separating our bedroom from the rest of the airy Mediterranean apartment lifted, and a strange man, ostensibly in his mid-thirties, with dark, silky hair that greyed at the temples, and a handsome countenance glided silently into the room.

I lifted myself off the bed and Aramis hissed, baring his teeth at the intruder.

“A thousand pardons, sir,” the man spoke in a tongue I immediately recognized as the language of the Bard. “I would have arrived sooner, but a suitable vessel was difficult to locate on such short notice. And good afternoon to you as well, Master Flittermouse. Tea?”

“Grigori?!” we both exclaimed.

“Beg pardon again, sirs. I should have anticipated you not recognising me. Thank you for your restraint in not eating me, Master Aramis.”

Aramis wrapped himself in a sheet, rather demurely, and hopped off of me to the floor.

“Outstanding!” he declared, walking up to the newcomer and looking him up and down. “It really is you, Grimaud?”

“Yes, sir. But now I bear the name of a Mr. Hilary Grimley. Though I do not fancy the Christian name ‘Hilary’. What a joke! Mr. Grimley will suffice.”

“Why are you British?” Aramis asked, taking the words right out of my mouth.

“And how are you so attractive?” I added, sliding out of the bed and approaching my guarding angel in the nude, seeing no reason to pretend at wearing a toga, like my suddenly shy lover.

He _was_ rather fetching. There was no way of getting around it.

“Kyrios,” my guardian gave me an exasperated look, which I found immediately recognizable. “I hope this isn’t going to be some kind of a… ahhh… problem for you? My new vessel’s attractiveness. It would be rather daft of you to become…”

“Shut it, swine!” I ordered.

He bowed curtly and once more made the offer of “Tea?”

I waved the Grigori off and Aramis laughed. I felt flustered, so I found his mirth incredibly comforting.

“Grimaud is hot,” Aramis winked.

“Stop it, kitten.”

“Luckily, he’s clearly too old for you.”

“Oh, Aramis, really!”

“Is he truly going to make tea? I’m disturbed. But also a bit excited.”

I pulled him close to myself and unwrapped the sheet, letting it fall to the floor. “Show me how excited you are.”

“You’ve been dead for a long time, my love,” he purred, wrapping his arms around me. “You haven’t gathered yet the appreciation for the fine art of brewing a proper cup of tea.”

“You’ve brought me back to a very strange world, then, my Aramis.”

For a few moments, all I did was lose myself in the press of his lips against mine. The heady perfume of his natural scent clung to me and I wanted nothing but to taste the breath of life again in his kisses. His tongue pressed against mine, swiped across my teeth, his own teeth pulled on my lips, and a sigh of contentment flitted back and forth between our mouths.

“There is much I need to tell you,” he pronounced, pulling away gently. “You may wish to sit down.”

“Tea!” Mr. Grimley appeared with a silver platter and what appeared to be a porcelain tea pot in the artisan style of Delft, and two matching, delicately ornate cups.

“How did you…?” I wouldn’t even know where to begin to enumerate his vast wonders. Where did he get the tea? How did he brew it so quickly? Did he steal fire from the Gods to boil the water? Meanwhile, the Grigori presented the tray to me mutely. “Oh, nevermind.”

“And welcome back, Kyrios. Marvelous to have you amongst the living again.”

It was all too much to deal with, at the moment. I felt the pressure of Aramis’ hand as he pushed me down onto the mattress and I sat.

“Athos, brace yourself. You’ve missed _a lot_ of world events,” my lover looked down at me with concerned eyes.

“War, war, and more war? Perhaps a plague or two?” Aramis blushed. “It’s always the same, flittermouse.”

“Well, look,” Aramis sat down next to me. “There were reasons for me not bringing you back sooner.”

“I’m sure they were excellent, my love,” I said, taking his hands in mine.

“There was a Revolution in France,” Aramis frowned and his fingers squeezed mine.

“Oh dear,” Mr. Grimley pronounced. “Is the King all right?”

“Not even remotely. They cut off his head,” Aramis announced.

“Oh _my_! It was very thoughtful of you not to put the Kyrios through such a trial again,” the Grigori prattled on.

“They also cut off the Queen’s head,” Aramis continued.

“What? Who?!” I exclaimed in outrage.

“The plebs. They killed everyone. They killed the nobles and the clergy, and when they ran out, they just went on killing each other. It was exhausting. I got so exhausted, I let them kill me too for a bit.”

“Aramis!” I felt faint and needed to lie down. “The horror!”

“Actually it was called the ‘Terror’, my love.”

Smelling salts appeared out of thin air and were waved under my nose.

“Ugh, get off, Grimley!”

“Sir.”

“Aramis,” I grabbed his hands again, “What you’re telling me is atrocious!”

“This is why I did not bring you back until now.”

“What is happening now?”

“The Bourbons have been restored.”

“That’s… terrific. Was there a renewed nymph deal?” I asked and then I remembered something else. “Wait a minute… _What did you do to Marie!_ ”

“That’s a conversation for a different time, my love.”

“No, now is good,” Grimley nodded.

“Get out!” Aramis pointed to the curtain.

“You can’t tell him what to do - he’s mine,” I protested, feeling peeved by his avoidance of my questions. “Grimley, get lost!”

The sassy bastard rolled his eyes with his habitual insolence and glided out of the room, taking the silver tray with him.

“All right, Aramis,” I lay back down, making myself comfortable. “Start talking. We have all the time in the world.”

***

Aramis languished in a fitful sleep, his fingers clutching at whichever one of my limbs he could reach. I pressed a kiss to his forehead and twisted my arm out of his grasp.

“My poor angel,” I whispered. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”

I grabbed the pillow that was still warm with my body heat, and stuck it under his arm, grinning as he burrowed his nose into the soft down. Just as I was about to rise from the bed, his hand reached out and clutched at my wrist.

“Where are you going?”

So, my pillow decoy had failed and my lover had been awakened.

“I have to go back up Olympus,” I replied. “I have unfinished business there. But I promise, I’ll come back.”

“I’m coming with you,” he stated with determination and swung his legs out of bed.

“No, angel.” I dressed myself quickly in the clothes set out by the meticulous Mr. Grimley. “This is a trip I have to make alone.”

“Not a chance,” he shook his head. “You might get stuck up there for another thirty years, and I can’t take that. I won’t.”

I couldn’t contradict him, not when he had a valid point, and was looking at me like that.

“All right,” I sighed. “But you have to stay out of my way, no matter what happens, or what you might see. Promise me, Aramis.”

“Is that the condition of coming with you?” I fixed my eyes on him with as stern an expression as I could muster. “Fine. I promise.”

At the door, we ran into the Grigori, looking at us both with an implacable countenance.

“Mr. Grimley, come along.”

“Where are we going, Kyrios?”

“The Throne of Zeus.”

“Very good, Sir. I’ll bring some water.”

Aramis and I exchanged a look - the Grigori seemed to have really enjoyed his vacation of a century and a half. Either that, or his newly acquired Britishness had greatly mellowed his character.

We had not made that ascent together since our first time in Litochoro, when we were so innocent still in the ways of our love and thought ourselves invincible. We thought ourselves gods. Drunk on each other more than on Hera’s supplication cake, we were a beacon for trouble, a magnet for jealousy. This time, as if sensing my purpose, lizards went scattering out of our way, grasses appeared to part before my footsteps, and rocks themselves curved softly under my heel, as if afraid of awakening my ire.

“What are you going to do?” Aramis asked, his fingers wrapping around my hipbone as he pressed into my side.

“You’ll see.”

“Athos, I can’t lose you again,” he whispered, and I pushed him into the rocky side of the mountain and kissed him until I had stolen all his breath and left him speechless.

“You will never lose me again, Aramis,” I swore, and pulled him higher up. Onwards, upwards, to the eye and heart of Olympus. “Stay here,” I finally said and then gestured to the Grigori to remain with him, as we approached the summit. The sacrificial slab, eroded with time and blood, lay ahead of me, under the promontory of the Throne of Zeus.

There, on the stone warmed by the Gods themselves, I sat cross-legged and closed my eyes. I descended quickly into a meditative state, and shortly arrived at my congress with the Universe, from which I drew the strength from every dimension. I was Buddha. I was Jesus. I was the Universe and everything and nothing. From this state, I called out to her.

“Eris! Come down here!”

Above my body, the vault of Olympus opened up. But my mind was much bigger than my body, and so with my mind’s eye I saw her descend in a flurry of beating black wings.

“What do you think you’re doing, Athos?”

I opened my eyes and rose, feeling the power of the universal truth vibrating through me.

“Eris,” I said to her, “I have suffered too long for having once bore you love. You once had power over me, but now all your power is vanquished.”

She laughed and stood proudly with her hands on her hips. Her armour glowed under the rays of the afternoon sun.

“You cannot vanquish my power,” she sneered. “My power comes from Olympus!”

“Your power comes from those who believe in you and worship you, sister. And I was the last of your worshippers,” I reminded her.

“Nonsense. I am eternal.”

“No, Discord,” I smiled and focused my mind on her attributes, beginning to take them apart one by one. “I loved you once as a concept. Well, now the concept of discord is repugnant to me. Instead, I seek only the calm of peace.”

“What are you doing?” she trembled and took an involuntary step back.

“I loved you once as a goddess. But now I prefer Buddha to your cruel brand of divinity. He taught me that my power lies within me and in my own grasp, whereas your power is dependent on the people who have created you in their own image.”

“Stop that!” she exclaimed, her hand clutching at her stomach, at the gnawing, spreading pain that my words were causing her.

“I loved you once as a woman,” I continued without mercy. “But I love Aramis now. You _know_ that. That is why you have tried so hard to separate us all these years. You knew that once I let go of all my feelings for you, you would not survive. And that is why you’re now dying, oh my jealous sister.”

“Stop that! Stop!” she screamed. Her body doubled over where she stood gasping for air.

“I seek you, Eris, among your aggregates,” I continued, “and I no longer find you. You are empty. Without my love, you don’t exist. You are nothing. You can do nothing.”

“We’ll see about that,” she ground through her teeth, unsheathing the sword that always hung at her side.

“You draw your sword at me, sister? But you have no arms with which to wield it.”

With an ear-rending wail, her fingers unclenched and the sword fell out of her hands. “My arms!” she screamed. “Stop! Stop this!” Her arms, like deflated sails, hung at her side. She looked upwards and unfurled her wings to flee.

“You wish to fly away, sister, but you have no wings,” I said.

“No!” she cried, falling to the ground in a heap of fallen feathers. Only skeletal remains rose out from her shoulder blades, where her beautiful wings used to rise. How I used to love those wings! “Stop! Father! Father!”

“You have no power, godling,” I stood over her broken form. “You will become nothing but a shade, haunting this mountain crest, a ghoul wailing in the night.”

“Help me! Father!” she screamed. She faded before my eyes, her corporeal form losing its matter, until all that was left was a shimmer of gray smoke. For a moment, the smoke tried to cling to my ankles, but I shook it off and watched it slither and be scattered by the winds.

I walked back towards the Throne of Zeus.

“Who’s next?” I shouted up to the heavens. “Perhaps you, stepmother?”

“That is enough!” a loud voice boomed behind me, causing my hair to rise up on the back of my neck.

“Father,” I turned around and faced him. “You did not answer your daughter’s pleas. Then again, why should she be any different? You never answered mine either.”

“Athos, you go too far,” Zeus said and extended his staff. At the head of it, I could see the electricity of a nascent lightning bolt, growing, kindling, ready to strike.

“You don’t want to do that, Father,” I narrowed my eyes, feeling the immense surge of power from Eris’ demise still flooding me.

“You can’t destroy Olympus,” my progenitor spoke, “Your immortality is tied to it.”

“It’s tied to the curse,” I spat out at him. “But this power I have to destroy you, it does not come from Olympus. It comes from a much bigger place.”

“You are my _son_!” Zeus slammed the staff upon the ground and the bolt of lightning shot into the skies above our heads.

“Then prove it,” I stated. “Grant my… requests.”

“Demands, you mean to say.”

“I would not insult you, _Father_ , by making demands.”

“Let us hear your requests then,” he made a sweeping motion with his hand and I felt some of my rage dissipate. Rage had no place here. It was a creature of _samsara_ and I have risen above it as I sat in the Underworld. I have mastered my mind until I could use it as a weapon against those who would do me harm.

“First of all, I want the curse lifted and immortality restored to me based on my birthright.”

“Granted!” Zeus smiled. “But, you realize, by granting you full divinity, I would tie you to Olympus with unbreakable bonds?”

“That’s the only way to guarantee that I do not destroy you,” I reminded him.

“You have vanquished Discord,” Father went on. “You can inherit her immortality. Her spirit will be banished from Olympus forever, doomed to roam the world as a howling ghost. But for all this, you must pick up her mantle or else we are thrown out of balance.”

“You’re not serious?” I faltered for a moment. “You want me to _become_ Discord?”

“I believe these _men_ you are so fond of have a saying in that regard. With great power, my son, comes great responsibility.”

I laughed. “You want me to be your errand boy on Earth.”

“You have hit us where we hurt, Athos. We are a dying race, and growing weaker. Other deities all over the world are becoming extinct, through human neglect or active hunting. You and your revenant must do your part in restoring the natural balance.” As he spoke, I felt something stirring inside my chest. A strange ray of light, of _mission_. “These hunters, they were unleashed because of something that Aramis did. And now, generation after generation, their strength and number has grown, while we lie dormant and helpless to do anything to stop them. I will make you a god, if you abandon your Buddhist ways and take up the sword again in defense of our kind.”

“Then, I must ask you for two more things,” I replied, my heart pounding in my chest.

I was risking a lot, but so was he. He had to have been desperate to be making a deal like that with me. A devil’s bargain. Well, I feared no devils, and indeed loved one of them above all else in the Universe.

“Name your conditions,” Zeus spoke.

“None of you must ever try to come between me and Aramis again. None of you must ever touch him, or even _look_ at him without my permission.” I looked up at the clouds, knowing my Anemoi cousins were watching and listening.

“How very territorial,” Father mused, but did not fume. “Granted. What else?”

“My Grigori,” I said, remembering our last parting. “He must never age and die again.”

“You will be a god, Athos. Fully immortal. You will no longer need a guardian,” Father reminded me.

“I understand that. But he’s already in this vessel, and I no longer want him to suffer the ravages of time.”

“That is all?” Zeus lifted his eyebrows at me, making me wonder whether I was selling my soul too cheaply.

“Give me what I’ve asked for,” I said, “and then we’ll see if I need to renegotiate.”

“Granted!” he said. His hand moved swiftly, his staff pointed straight at my chest, and a blazing ball of energy shot right through me, knocking me back against the stones of the Throne of Zeus. He stood over me, his handsome yet stern face framed with the rays of Helios, like a halo on a Byzantine icon. “I’ll tell you something else, Athos,” he spoke, extending his arm and pulling me back up to my feet. “I did answer your plea once before. Who do you think sent that Jesuit galleon to save your revenant from the nymph’s hunters? The King of France?” His raucous laughter echoed across the summit and, in a flash that would have blinded a mere mortal, he was gone.

***

The Grigori was strong. He had always been strong, he must have been, propelled by an energy that was not of this world. But this new vessel of his, a man in his prime, tall and broad-shouldered and possessed of the impressive musculature of a pugilist, was strong enough to tether me.

“That’s the only way to guarantee that I do not destroy you,” Athos was saying, and I growled. Behind me, the Grigori flexed his muscles and clutched me in the vice of his arms. I should have dug my teeth into the flesh of his wrist, but I couldn’t lower my head, for it would have meant to take my eyes off the scene on the plateau. It was not a Greek tragedy. It was a fight of Biblical proportions.

My godling – nay, a God now – stood in shimmering armour, battered and bloodied, with a gash across his cheekbone and another one on his arm. The image quivered and blurred as his shape reasserted itself: the Athos of now fused with the Athos of days of yore. With the Athos who had walked across the battlefields of Troy as a warrior and a son of the ruling God. Olympian fire, Olympian power surged through him and crackled in the air around him. If I had thought him magnificent before when he was a mere demigod, I should have averted my eyes from the sight of his Divinity.

I ground my teeth as flames of wrath seared within my breast, setting my blood a-boil, until nothing but steam surged through my veins. How dare he. How _dare_ he.

“None of you must ever try to come between me and Aramis again. None of you must ever touch him, or even _look_ at him without my permission.” Athos looked up at the clouds and I wanted to ram my fangs into his stretched neck and tear at it until the last drop of blood gushed from the open wound.

“Calm down, Master Flitterbat,” the Grigori muttered. “Kyrios has to fight this fight alone.”

I rammed my elbow into the Olympian valet’s stomach and he let go of me, groaning in pain. For the space of a heartbeat, I balanced above the abyss: one step only would decide about my fate. I could go, leave the mountain; leave Athos and his whole family to deal with their sordid affairs in peace. Or I could run to him and challenge the gods side by side with him.

I did neither. The terrible cold, the cold of battle, had descended over me and my thoughts were cold and clear like chips of ice. The Grigori was right, this was Athos’ fight.

But he was fighting it on _my_ behalf. Protecting me as if I was a fucking fainting _damsel_. Did he expect me to swoon into his arms with gratitude after he had humiliated me in front of his family? His Hyacinthus, he had used to call me. His Ganymedes. His little _catamite_. That was what they were thinking of me, those gods, whose grasp of the world and its humans was as limited as that of fish who viewed humans from the depth of their pond. Who knew nothing of the intricacies and complexities of our relationship, restricted as they were to fulfil one function in an antediluvian pantheon.

They were nothing in the world now. Nobody knew that better than me, for I had studied the weaknesses of the Old Ones for centuries. In the Jesuit’s robe, I had banished gods and demons into the shadows where they belonged. How dared Athos swoop in and deal out the killing stroke?

“I did answer your plea once before,” the banished All-Father spoke. “Who do you think sent that Jesuit galleon to save your revenant from the nymph’s hunters? The King of France?”

His laughter rang in my ears even after the celestial vault had sealed itself and a peaceful cerulean sky shimmered above our heads. My skin tightened and crawled.

I turned to the Grigori. “Go. Away.”

He eyed me quite unperturbed. “I’m not going to leave Kyrios-”

I stepped closer and spoke with compressed lips and flashing eyes. “Do not have the presumption to believe that just because you have been granted immortality I will not kill you, Grigori. Go.”

His gaze flickered away from my face as he looked at Athos over my shoulder. In the next moment, he was melting into the shadows of the boulders that lined the path. In the blink of an eye, he was gone.

A wave of heat hit me, the air shimmered golden and Athos appeared by my side, resplendent in his Achaean battle regalia and smelling of power and blood.

“Why all this fume and fury?”

“I am _not_ your little cup bearer.”

“I know that, Aramis.”

“First the human uprising, as they murdered their monarchs and upset the world order.” I had been helpless then, too, disarmed and disabled. I narrowed my eyes, refusing to admire the golden halo that enveloped his entire form and the mantle of Discord, thrown carelessly over his shoulder and arm. “And now you, _you_!” I looked him up and down, half in disgust, half in- “That was my fight too. You took it away from me, you _bastard_.”

His face changed, and it was quite the satisfying sight: to see a god falter and hesitate. They were so full of themselves, those deities, always forgetting that their fates were tied to human faiths and lores.

“That was between Eris and me,” Athos said, still quite calm, but I could feel the energy of Discord prickle under his skin, and her mantle appeared to undulate on its own accord, as if attempting to wrap itself around both his shoulders.

“And I assume it had nothing to do with me, is that what you are going to say?”

“Aramis!” He stopped short and frowned at me. “Weren’t you listening? It had everything to do with you, you are-”

“Not important enough even to consult. You didn’t tell me what you were planning to do. Did you think that I would thank you for protecting me like a child?”

He thought me weak and brittle. He had forgotten what I was, what I could be. His angel, his kitten, he had called me. Even though he had not entered Elysium, the Stygian shores had calmed his blood. But now the legacy of Discord pulsated through him and it erupted in flames of ire.

“Not like a child, Aramis,” he stood so close that my lapels brushed against his splendid armour with every breath I took. “Like the man I love.”

“You bastard.” I was breathless with… rage. Its fire burned under my skin and drove blood to the surface.

“If you insist on insulting my parentage, you could at least have the decency to wait until we leave my Father’s adyton.”

“Fuck your father.”

He smirked then. The ancient, heathen smile, more insolent than ever now that it appeared on the face of a heathen deity. “You have a filthy mouth, Monsieur Flitterbat.”

My teeth tore through the ligaments and flesh of his neck as if through butter. Oh, but this was… The nectar of the gods. So much light. Such potency. I had never tasted anything like it before. The blood of the demigod had rendered me incoherent and blind more than once. The blood of the God unmanned me. I sank into him, mindless of his breastplate that dug painfully into my breast. His arms around me, and we were sinking both, onto the grass, onto the mantle of Discord that had slipped off his shoulder and spread on the ground.

In my mouth – Olympian fire. A stream of lava, pouring from Hephaestus’ own forge and incinerating everything in its path. My eyes were blind like those of a man who had gazed at the face of Helios for too long. The god in my arms flexed his body, and I clung to him with both my arms and with fingers like talons. So much blood. A river of blood, gushing and gurgling and tearing down the mightiests defences. My mouth was glued to his neck. Beneath me, he parted his legs and I slipped between his thighs and thrust my pelvis against his groin. The sacred Eucharist, celebrated on the Holy Mountain: a pagan rite, a blessed union, sealed with the blood of a god who had given his life for me more than once.

Through the black fog that obscured my senses, I saw flashes of light: thunderbolts against the black sky. They illuminated Athos’ face, which was still aglow with celestial light. His eyes, black like ebony and more liquid than ever, wide open; the shadows of his long lashes. The sculpted line of his cheekbone, marred by the ancient Trojan wound from where blood trickled into his hair. I saw it all without lifting my head from where I was drinking from his neck, for my senses had left me and appeared disconnected from my body. I saw us both as if from far away, from a seat on the Olympian throne. Athos’ arms – one thrown wide open, hand clutching the mantle of Discord that pulsated gently beneath our bodies; the other curled around my shoulders and back, pressing me to him as I fed on divine lifeforce.

The Achaean armour. It cut into the flesh of my stomach and my hipbones and I thrust a hand between our bodies, where it encountered scorching heat. The fire of the Gods coursed through him and his skin was burning with it.

Words rose towards the skies, as he spoke a prayer in the ancient language of the Gods. I heard nothing, I understood nothing… and then – a familiar sound. “ _Aramis._ ” The sound of my name on his lips, and the fog lifted. For a moment, I knew where I was and who I was, and the God beneath me had turned back into a man. I lifted my bloodstained mouth off his neck. I lifted my head. I looked down at him, and his eyes, gleaming embers in his flushed face, gazed into my souls.

Athos craned his neck and licked across my mouth, sucking his own blood off my lips. I pushed my tongue into his mouth, between his parted teeth, as I thrust my hand between his legs. The Achaean armour… A beautifully crafted cuirass over a chitoniskos of finest linen and then – my hand searched lower. He was naked underneath it, and his cock was hard and huge against my questing fingers. He hissed when I wrapped my hand around his damp flesh. “Aramis!” The arm around my shoulders tightened, he began to claw at my clothes.

He, the Greek god in Achaean regalia, and I, swathed in the complex attire of a fashionable gentleman. Athos released my mouth and tugged at my cravat with his teeth. My coat slipped off my shoulders. Waistcoat, shirt, breeches… too much, too many layers for us to handle in our frenzied state. I hung above him with my dishevelled and torn garments still clinging to me, pressing my bared cock into the heat of his groin. Athos was panting, open-mouthed, breathless, desperate, suspended between the need to devour and the need to succumb, between heaven and earth, between god and man.

I let myself drop on top of him, mindless of the cuirass, and shoved my cock deep between his legs, fucking myself between the flesh of his thighs, against the cleft of his ass. One hand around his cock, I pinned him down with my other hand tangled in his hair. The muscles of my shoulders and arms were burning from exertion, and we both groaned at every harsh, bruising thrust of my hips.

A cloud rose around us, the heady scent of his arousal and mine. My sweat dripped down my face and mingled with his, and the blood, the blood that trickled from his neck still, an inexhaustible source of power and life. I kissed his open mouth again and his teeth dug into my lower lip. I pressed bruising kisses to the ridge of his jaw and dived back in, sucking at the still-open wound, widening the gash with my fangs and drinking, drinking the power, the virility, the divinity of Athos. Then – a burst, a shock that shook my whole body, an explosion of taste, and then another explosion as his loins forced his climax out of him in violent jolts. I cried out into the hot flesh of his neck and my vision blackened.

A soft touch to my lips reanimated me as I lay in a half-swoon. Athos had tipped my head back with a trembling hand and pressed his fingers to the wound on the side of his neck. He glanced at them and carried them to his mouth and I watched his tongue flick out and lick off his own blood. “Is this what you want from me, little chyortik?” he asked in the tone of voice that had been familiar of old: teasing yet oddly reverend.

“More,” I croaked. My voice had quite deserted me, as if his blood had glued together not just my lips, but also my voice cords. “I want more. I want everything.”

“Always so greedy.” His voice was barely more than a sigh. I slipped off him, sliding down the smooth cuirass until I lay nestled by his side. The wound in his neck was healing before my very eyes, throb after throb after throb. I stretched my neck and licked across the smooth new skin with the tip of my tongue, leaving a pale track in the dark, sticky blood.

“Thank you,” he said very quietly with his eyes closed.

“What for?”

“For not fucking me in my Father’s sanctuary.”

“No oil.”

Athos’ chest shook with strangled laughter. “Greedy, yet practical,” he muttered.

“Mmh.” I stirred in his arms and peeled my leg off his, wincing as we came unstuck. His damp cock lay soft in my hand and I let go of it and wiped my palm on his chiton. Then, I wiped it on Discord’s mantle. “I believe that was rather more of it than usual,” I said and lifted my hand to his mouth to watch him suck in my fingers and lick them clean. “Has your new godhood imbued you with more blood and more spunk?”

“An infinite supply,” my insolent idol said smugly. “Do you want another go?”

“Not here.” I pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth and pushed myself off him. “Your family have seen enough. And don’t think you are forgiven.”

“Wouldn’t cross my mind.”

“I believe,” I said, as he pulled his sweat and blood-soaked hair off the mantle of Discord. “We have ruined your sister’s cloak.”

“Don’t worry, chyortik.” Athos sat up and pulled me in by my loosened cravat to kiss me. “My good Grimley will take care of it. He will see to it being laundered, and I am prepared to wager he will iron it himself.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with bonus flitterart!

**Litochoro, May 1815**

By the time we arrived back at the foot of the mountain (which I hoped with all my heart never to have to climb again), the halo around Athos’ head had dispersed. His Achaean regalia, symbols of his divinity, had lost their corporeal form and stayed behind in Olympian realms. He looked quite the nineteenth-century gentleman again, in his dark blue tailcoat of military cut and with an épée de cour by his side.

Light flickered behind the windows of our rented house. Athos strode in through the door and thrust his hat and his gloves at the Grigori, who exhibited the perfect mimicry of a servant in his face and posture. “You will have to polish my boots again, Grimley,” he said in a detached tone. “And those of M. Aramis,” he added with a glance over his shoulder.

In the shadows, I trembled. The careless, phlegmatic air, so reminiscent of the Athos of our Parisian years two hundred years ago. He was settling into the role of the aristocrat once again, shrouding himself into a mantle of lassitude. But that was not the only mantle that he now wore.

“I believe M. le comte has another item for you to clean, Grimley.” I stepped out of the shadows into the circle of candlelight and pointed a finger at Athos. My skin shimmered like ivory in the warm light.

“Indeed.” The Grigori stood motionless like a statue.

“Give it to him, Athos.” I smirked at my lover, who arched his elegant brow and smirked back.

“I believe you are carrying it, M. l’abbé.”

I looked down, and indeed – the mantle of Discord lay curled around my shoulder and arm like a sleeping serpent.

“It’s M. le duc now,” I all but snarled at the God of Discord, shoving the damp, stained fabric at the domestic, whose silence was more eloquent than his rude hand gestures had ever been.

“Is it?” Athos smiled gently. “That’s nice.” He turned towards his valet. “Are you still here, Grigori?”

“I’m always here, Kyrios.”

“Well, don’t be.” Athos raised his hand with the riding crop as if to strike the insolent guardian across the face, but instead, he poked the bundle of discord in the valet’s hands. “Go and do your chores.”

The Grigori looked down at the mantle and managed to sniff in disdain without compromising his expression of Olympian calm. “I shall wake the washerwoman, Kyrios. Do sirs require anything else before I retire?”

In the next moment, he had faded through the door, before Athos’ wrath or mine could reach him and crush his skull or spine.

“Insolent worm,” Athos sneered, turning back to me. Then – a groan. The tendrils of my wrath had wrapped themselves around him as I propelled him backwards into the wall.

“You are not forgiven,” I growled into his face.

His eyes were huge and dark. “I know.”

Beneath his elegant waistcoat and shirt, his heart thrummed like a pagan drum. His blood throbbed so close to the surface, I could taste its sweet, potent aroma on my tongue and palate.

Suddenly, a light went on behind that dark, steady gaze and the corner of his mouth curled up like a cat’s. “Has chyortik not walked off his anger?”

My knee between his legs, pinning him to the wall, and his hot breath on my lips. “No,” I breathed, and it was the breath of the Duke of Alameda that settled on the god’s skin. Athos’ body, so vibrant, humming with celestial lifeforce… and the shadow of death that swept over him to feed and devour. He was so strong, my idol. So powerful. Beneath the touch of my hands and my lips, his blood churned. His body melted and tautened all at once, rolling into me with a sway of his hips.

I wrenched the riding crop from his fingers and dragged the tip up the length of his boot and his thigh. “Too many clothes,” I whispered. “Do that again, what you did before, on the mountain.”

His smirk deepened. “I can’t.” His fingers digging into my waist, my hip, as he ground our groins together. “That’s not something I can do at will, it just happens. A physical,” he licked across my mouth, “manifestation of my godliness.”

“You asshole,” I murmured.

“Is that the way to speak to your god, my priestling?” His hand travelled lower and he squeezed my arse painfully. “Tell me, Aramis: is sodomy still so woefully out of fashion?”

“More than ever, you Greco deviant.”

“Shame.” He tilted his head back against the wall and licked his lips, his eyes agleam.

I grinned, showing him all my teeth in a dazzling display. “You’ll just have to keep quiet.”

He groaned again, for I had thrown myself into him with my full weight and thrust my hand between his thighs. “So hard,” I panted against his lips and pawed at his breeches. “Take this off!”

“On your knees,” he panted back. Within me, my blood boiled. I pulled back to give us both room to manoeuvre. His cock sprang forth, and he slid his hand down its length and up again, watching me with half-lidded eyes. It looked even bigger than ever before, as if his godhood directly affected his manhood. I hooked my hand into his waistband and tugged; he followed willingly, tumbling into my arms, tumbling to the floor with me, and we rolled around, clawing at each other, tearing off each other’s coats and cravats, hands weaving through each other’s hair.

The next seconds happened in a blur. There was warmth and there were hands, strong and broad and surprisingly tender, and Athos’ scent overwhelmed me, as he ended up sprawled on the ground and buried under my body. He was rubbing himself against me, I realised through the fog in my brain, and I was rubbing back, because heat stung me in the spots where our naked skin made contact.

Athos’ unshaven chin chafed against my neck and I turned my head to allow better access. Then, the scraping of teeth against the base of my throat, along my collarbone, and Athos bit down on my shoulder, until I swore and arched and yanked his hair. “Fuck,” I rasped, “ _Fuck_!”

My thigh pressed between Athos’ legs, who was rutting against me like the dog his warlike brother turned into. I snatched his hand and pressed it against my cock. When his teeth clenched around my shoulder, I cried out, and then again when Athos’ hand worked itself into my breeches and began rubbing my cock in sharp, jerky movements. It was painful and too rough. It was also too dry, and Athos pulled his hand back and spat into the palm before shoving it back in.

I pushed my face against his shoulder and ground my groin into his hand. My own fingers closed around his cock. It was hot and sticky and – _gods_! – huge, and my wrist was trapped awkwardly between our bodies. I gave his cock a sharp pull and received a hiss and a bite in return. We rolled again, and slammed into the table leg.

“ _Aramis!_ ” Athos moaned, fucking himself into my hand. He was so close. I tightened my grip, and reached out with my other hand, groping blindly on the table until – _Ah_! There it was.

The flagon fell over and rolled to the edge, towards my fumbling fingers. They were slick and dripping with oil when I pushed them between Athos’ legs and into him. He whimpered when I breached him, and then his mouth fell open and he sucked in a lungful of air. So tight. He clenched around my fingers and his cock twitched, half-hidden under his shirttails. I pushed the soft linen up, baring his stomach and his swollen prick. His balls rested against the heel of my hand, soft and vulnerable, and I cradled them gently as I pulled my fingers out again.

His face flushed, his beautiful mouth bitten, his hair a sweat-soaked mess, he arched his hips and yanked me down by my hair. “You fiend,” he muttered. “You beautiful, enchanting fiend.” His mouth on mine, his breath in my mouth, in my lungs, divine energy that sparked every cell in my body back to life. “Do that again.” Angling his hips, he attempted to impale himself on my fingers once more.

I pulled away. “On your knees.”

He opened his eyes and stared at me. My slick fingertip slipped in and Athos bit his lip.

“On your knees!” I repeated and twisted my hand between his legs. “There’s more. You know there is.”

Athos rolled over and spread his legs.

His curved spine, the exquisite lines of his loins as he arched his back for me – the breathtaking beauty of Athos’ body rendered me dizzy as I pressed the tip of my cock into the slick heat of him. He shuddered like a horse before the race. I moved my hands up and down his flank, pushing his shirt further and further up, until his back lay bare and droplets of sweat glittered in the grooves of his ribs and his spine.

My cock throbbed where Athos’ body clamped down on it. And then, I was sheathed balls-deep inside him, and he panted into his own forearm.

I pulled back and thrust into him. Athos gasped, a strangled sound, muffled by the fabric of his sleeve.

“What?” I leaned in and wiped sweat and hair from my forehead. “I didn’t quite hear that.”

A shuddering laugh, and then nothing. His back, the nape of his neck, were damp with perspiration and I pressed my mouth into his hair and inhaled his scent. “I didn’t catch that, Athos. Care to repeat it?”

Determined silence was the only reply he made me. I stretched out atop him and reached across the floor for the riding crop that I had dropped. A quick lash, a sharp sting, a red streak on the pale flesh, and Athos cried out. His arousal spiralled, I could smell it, and I reached down to where his cock stood ramrod hard against his stomach. Another slap with the crop, another cry torn from his throat, and I began to fuck him, hard, rutting against him, the whip forgotten, as I hung over him, driving my hips against his ass with desperate, forceful shoves.

Athos cried out again, and the next thing I knew was he was coming, coming into my hand, onto his own stomach, his shirt, the floor, and it didn't seem to end, his balls wouldn't stop pumping, his cock wouldn't stop twitching, and the spasms that shook his body pushed me over the edge. I groaned my relief when it subsided and collapsed, shaken and drained and lightheaded.

“You didn’t take my blood,” Athos whispered eventually. He stirred in my arms and my soft cock slipped out from between his slick thighs.

“Later,” I whispered back. Our hands lay entangled above our heads and my fingers had gone numb. “I’m not done with you yet.”

A shiver ran through him and I knew that he smiled. “What if I repent?”

“Too late for that.” I nipped at the skin of his neck with my teeth.

“What happened to Christian charity, M. l’évêque?”

“How does Christian charity concern you, you pagan idol?”

“For a pious Christian bishop,” Athos twisted in my embrace and pressed a kiss to my forehead, “You pray most ardently to heathen deities.”

“Only if I expect to have my prayers answered.” I clutched a fistful of his torn, dishevelled shirt and kissed him on the mouth. “Will they be answered?” There was a steely edge in my voice.

Athos laughed, undaunted. “Whatever you wish, my love.”

***

**Litochoro, May 1815**

Whatever Father had done to me, coursed through every fibre of my being. Is this what it felt like to them, the Gods? Whatever invincibility I had experienced before, now felt like humanity by comparison. I fancied making myself a crown of stones, just so my head would not float away. And the sounds Aramis had made when we lay together that night were not helping to ground me in any kind of personhood.

And then, what did it mean to bear Discord’s mantle? I had started wars effortlessly as a mere demigod before, for my brother’s glory and my own entertainment. What would I be able to do with this invisible power that may or may not have been granted me? I could not wait to try it out on that Corsican upstart that Aramis had told me about. Whom did he fancy himself? Some sort of a novel Alexander? A returned Nikephoros Phokas? I would be the judge of that, having known both those other emperors quite intimately.

I had walked out to the beach, to clear my head, while Aramis busied himself with making preparations for departure and writing letters. To whom - did not particularly matter. My new godhood had affected neither the love in my heart nor the ring-like scar around my forefinger. We would never be parted again.

It was there, on the beach at Litochoro, that the first pang of regret at my transformation came to me. I stood face to face with my Grigori.

“Grimley,” I said, feigning a lackadaisical attitude. “I presume you heard and saw everything that passed at the peak?”

“I did, Kyrios.”

“Then I suppose you understand that our ties have officially been severed and you’re free of your servitude to me.”

“I do, Kyrios.”

I frowned. He frowned back at me. We stood there for what felt like another eternity, neither one of us saying a word. _Ask him to stay_ , a voice inside my head insisted. _I’m not going to emotionally manipulate him like that_ , I argued back. _God or not, your life will be a vale of misery without him_ , the first voice continued. _How do you expect to handle your own finances? And linen? It’s not going to wash itself you know!_ Did the Olympian gnat actually find a way of invading my thoughts? I bit my lips and cleared my throat.

“Very good,” I finally said. “We’ll be leaving Greece tonight.” His expression remained inscrutable as always. “I hope you say goodbye before you take off,” I added, avoiding his eyes.

“Have a pleasant walk, sir,” he replied with even politeness and we walked past each other; he towards the sprawling village, and I in the opposite direction, where the azure glint of the waters met the golden sheen of the sand.

I stood with my back to the mountain, my eyes taking in the colors of the Aegean. _Home_. The bittersweet memories of it all, the ashes blowing in the wind. No, home was wherever Aramis was, now.

A squeal sounded behind me, a pathetic canine whimper, and the shadow of a large, shaggy dog mingled with mine.

“Ares,” I turned around. The dog tucked his tail and glared at me with eyes full of distrust. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, and extended my hand towards his canine avatar. The dog approached, sniffing my hand tentatively, and then proceeded to sniff about my loins while I ruffled the fur of his scruff. “Cut it out, Ares. It creeps me out when you do that.” The dog scowled and his eyes gleamed with golden flames. “Oh, come on,” I scratched behind his ear and sank down into the sand until we were nose to snout.

He let out another sad squeal and bared his teeth at me. I ran my hands along the fur of his face, touching his canines with my fingers while he stared at me and contemplated whether or not he should bite off my hand. It would, after all, simply grow back.

“I’m sorry about Eris,” I whispered. “I know she was your twin.” The dog sat and stared at me with big eyes full of silent judgment. “Do we really have to talk like this? Can’t you manifest?” The dog made a circle around me and then barked in the direction of nearby fishermen who had been reeling in their catch. “Good point. Down, boy,” I pulled him into my lap and pet the soft black fur.

 _Were you planning on killing me too?_ I finally heard Ares speak inside my own head, while the dog made himself comfortable on top of me.

“I thought about it,” I admitted. “You played your part, didn’t you? You let me think Aramis was dead. Why?”

 _Eris thought it would be hilarious_ , came his honest reply. _For what it’s worth, I do regret my part in it. I did not think you would actually die._

“I trusted you,” I hissed into the dog’s ear, my hands clutching at the thick fur until he snarled and nipped my ankle. “I always thought you were better than them. I don’t know why.”

_Bury your hurt, brother. We have to work together now._

“Now you have to play by my rules,” I said, looking out into the distance where a solitary white sail gleamed against the azure skies. “There is no War without Discord.”

_You will bring me many souls, Athos. A soul for each feather in our sister’s wings, I think. More. A soul for each thread in her mantle._

“Don’t push your luck, brother,” I whispered into the dog’s ear. “I can still destroy you. And Aramis would always make a very comely God of War. Father would approve.”

The dog squealed and scrambled off my lap, casting a look of betrayal upon me.

“Do not cross me again,” I tapped his snout.

He licked my hand and wagged his tail like the playful puppy he most certainly was not.

_Travel well, brother. I will always be with you._

He was about to prance off up the mountain but I pulled him back in by the scruff and buried my face in his thick fur. So many ashes blown in the wind. So many feathers. The rumbling sound of his chariot filled my ears, Eris’ voice carrying on an endless paean. A warm glow radiated from his canine fur. _To battle, Achaeans, to battle!_

“I _am_ sorry,” I whispered and wiped my eyes.

***

 _To: Mademoiselle M. Delorme_  
_Rue des Champs 78_  
_Ghent, Flanders_

_My dear Friend,_

_His Majesty, King Louis XVIII, may the gods grant him a long and happy reign, has reason to rejoice, for reinforcements are headed his way. Ever since the Corsican parvenu had been declared an outlaw by the Congress of Vienna, the powers of Europe have joined forces to put an end to his megalomaniac campaign. The august Bourbon monarch will not have to languish in exile much longer and his triumphal return to Paris is nigh._

_My own return is imminent, also. The task that had called me away from France is accomplished, my duty fulfilled, and you will find me a content man. The one thing that would render my happiness complete is a reunion with my old friend, the Baron du Vallon, whom I haven’t seen in many years. I have something to tell him that would give him great pleasure, but alas, the tides of fortune had driven us apart and I have lost track of his whereabouts. For all I know, he might have been promoted to the king of Sainte-Domingue. I believe the Caribbean crown and the matching crown jewels would suit him very well._

_My Friend, with your ties to the Normandy, you will be able to ascertain more easily than myself if the worthy baron had reclaimed his estates. I would have written to the widow to inquire if the prodigal Porthos had padded back like a homing tomcat, but I confess I have never cared to memorise her address. Or name._

_Find my old friend for me, and my gratitude will forever be yours. I entrust this letter to a swift-footed messenger who will arrive in Ghent long before my return. Soon, we shall be reunited and see the old order restored._

_A._

I folded the missive and sealed it, stood up from the table and walked to the window. A soft breeze stirred my hair and swept across my face. _Kisses of the Anemoi_ … I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. Swift-footed, sky-born messenger. The wind blew faster and harder. Wind of the East. Wind-fed leaping fire. The darkling _Euros_.

The wind stilled. In the street below, the clip-clop of hooves. I opened my eyes again and beheld a tawny horse, his mane dishevelled, his flanks heaving and darkened with sweat.

I narrowed my eyes. “Zephyrus.” The horse shook its mane and snorted. “I was expecting your brother.”

The horse rolled its eyes and stamped its hoof.

“I’m coming down.” I tapped the letter against the window frame and pushed down on the anger that was bubbling up within my breast. In spite of myself, I needed his help once again. Without the Anemoi, it would have taken me at least twice as long to traverse Europe this spring.

The horse was nibbling on a rhododendron bush. I looked it up and down and it rolled its bloodshot eyes in the rather unhinged manner of horses everywhere. “I need you to go to Flanders,” I told him. He nodded his head, snorting softly. “Was that a yes? Or are you just being a horse?”

Zephyrus shook his mane and neighed. I began to regret not having brought the crop with me.

“Here’s the letter that you must deliver.” He took it between his lips and I pulled my hand back and wiped it on my coat. “Don’t swallow it.”

He snorted again. And then, he pushed his soft nose into my side, nudging me with jovial familiarity. I grabbed one velvety ear and leaned in. “Do not make the mistake to underestimate me, Anemos,” I hissed. “I am _not_ your Hyacinthus. I am the man who knows how your kind can be destroyed. If you are attached to your corporeal form, do not provoke me to anger. Human or equine, your flesh is mortal. I have drunk the blood of minor deities before.”

The horse stepped back, and for a moment, I expected it to drop the letter and kick me. But then, the air boiled, the horse reared and its shape dissolved in swirls of mist. All that the West Wind left behind was the echo of clattering hooves and a steaming pile of manure.

***

Aramis and I did not have luggage. He put the oddly shaped, triangular hat on my head and wrinkled his nose in consternation.

“We’ll have to do something about your hair.”

“I’m sure they have barbers in Vienna, or wherever we’re going, flittermouse.”

“You should have asked him to stay,” Aramis whispered, not needing to clarify whom he meant. We both knew. “You have to admit, we never would have survived without him back in the day. And I, for one, have no plans to stop bloodying up the linen.”

“You know me, Aramis. How could I have asked such a thing of him?” I inquired, admiring my lover’s new military outfit with my eyes and hands. The triangular bizarrity sat much better on top of his head than mine. It would take some getting used to. And then there were the strange shoulder ornaments, which I was informed were literally called just that: epaulets.

“Afraid your Grigori would have broken your heart?” he jeered.

“Oh ha ha, Aramis. You wish to vex me? Imagine how annoying I can be now that I'm not in mortal fear of losing you!”

“That is the single most obnoxious thing I've ever heard you say!”

“Oh? Must be my newly acquired Discord powers,” I shrugged.

“Don't blame your dead sister for this! You've _always_ been an asshole!” There was no arguing with that, since it coincided with thoughts I had been having during my stroll on the beach earlier. Instead, I pulled him in and kissed him until my own head began to spin. “We’ll miss the boat,” Aramis whispered against my lips and pried his hands off my rear, albeit reluctantly.

“To be continued,” I stated and pulled him out of the apartment by his hand.

Imagine our shock when, at the bottom of the stairwell, we found Grimley, attired for the voyage and carrying a great number of provisions it would never have occurred either one of us to prepare.

“Have you come to say goodbye, then?” I asked.

“No, Kyrios,” the Grigori replied. “I’m to travel with you, sirs.”

“Until what port?” Aramis asked.

“Until whichever port is at the end of the world, sirs.” A mischievous glint lit up his eye. “I’m not leaving you, Athos,” he added to our growing stupefaction. “Nor you, Master Flittermouse.”

“Grimley,” I started, choked up with emotion. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Thank you,” Aramis provided for me, and embarrassed us all by throwing his arms around the Grigori for a significantly longer time than would have been accepted in polite society. He _was_ still the help.

“Now that this maudlin display is over,” the butler of Tartarus smirked at us, “You do realise this means you now have to pay me a fair wage?”

“Don’t push it, Grigori.”

“Ah well, nevermind, sirs. I shall just have to pay myself, with the money I manage on your behalf.”

“I can still eat you,” Aramis threatened, but his words just did not carry the same sting as they would have five minutes prior to the “maudlin display” the sassy bastard had mentioned.

***

**Adriatic Sea, May 1815**

On the felucca carrying us away from Greece, I leaned against the wall of the hull, while Aramis lay sprawled between my legs and against my chest, wrapped up in my arms like a warm shawl. I was distracting him from the _mal de mer_ with a diverting game called “Whom did you eat while I was dead?” whilst nibbling on his earlobes and trailing my lips up and down the side of his neck. “Fouquet?”

“Ugh, no! I swear, his blood would have turned to vinegar in my mouth, that sanctimonious ingrate!”

“Colbert?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Another nibble, followed by a slow lick, making him squirm but press into me instead of pulling away. “The so-called Sun King?”

“Oh, yes. Delicious. But not till he was quite old. They blamed it on the gangrene.”

I laughed into the back of his neck. Something stirred inside me. “Marie?” I whispered.

He turned to look up at me. “No,” he spoke earnestly. “No… she died of old age. A mortal’s death.”

I nodded slowly and pressed my lips to his hair. It smelled like the sea.

“D’Artagnan?”

I had already known the answer to that one, unless, of course, Eris had lied. She has been known to lie to me before.

He turned from me and would not speak, so I pressed him closer into my arms. “Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Did his blood turn to vinegar in your mouth, Aramis?”

“He had been there when you died. He was the one to bury you. He took your last breath, your last words, and my very grief away from me.”

“My last words had been ‘I’m coming. Wait for me.’ They were meant for you, my chyortik,” I said, remembering that terrible day. But now I would never die again.

“He did not tell me that,” Aramis shuddered against me.

“Then I am glad you ate him.”

“Truly?”

“No, of course not.”

We both laughed and I felt relieved, because I did not think I could stomach seeing him cry again.

***

 **Bonus Art** (made by yours truly)

 

Aramis, as described by Athos:

 

Athos, as described by Aramis:

 

And the bonus flitternipples that I made for Donna's birthday:

**Author's Note:**

> We're back!!! Happy New Year! We have a lot of great shit planned for you, even if we say so ourselves.
> 
> I'd also like to take this opportunity to ask those of you who write in the Musketeers fandom for a favor: please don't tag your show-based fics with the book tag because it floods the tag, makes fics hard to find, and compromises our chances of being Yuletide-eligible. Let this be your New Year mitzvah. Thanks! <3 El

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Guide To Grossness Vol IV – Things You Never Wanted To Know About The Disgustoids](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9539948) by [Favourite_alias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Favourite_alias/pseuds/Favourite_alias)




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